Cynsational Me

My guest post was featured yesterday on Cynsations, author Cynthia Leitich Smith's awesome all-things-kidlit blog.

I blogged about my inspirations for writing Camo Girl, my novel about friendship and fitting in in middle school.

Camo Girl deals with some hot-button issues of the day, like bullying, but mainly it is about learning to recognize real friendship and accepting yourself even when you are different from everyone around you.

Here's a teaser from my guest post.:

What’s your inspiration?” is a question that most authors I know get asked a lot—by friends, by child readers, by fellow writers.

Like most authors (I suspect), I’ve developed semi-canned answers to this question—answers which are based on truth, but which always leave me feeling a bit squirmy. I never can get to the bottom of something as unwieldy as my inspiration in a sound bite...."

...which is why I had to write an entire article about it. Read the rest here.