AND THE WINNER IS...

The random number generator (my 11 yo son ;) picked the #3 as the lucky winner of BEANBOY and AIRBALL! Leslie, that's you! Email your mailing address at mlbrown90 @ att dot net and I'll get them off to you!

Congratulations! Thanks for playing, friends. Hope you have a super-powered week. I'm a day late posting due to the flu. Blech.

THE MAN BEHIND MY MADNESS

Actually, he's the one who keeps me sane. But if you ever wonder where I get some of my zany ideas, well... you're lookin' at him!

You can read all about my man-muse (can men be muses?) on a guest blog I did for author Kai Strand.

And if you haven't entered to win signed copies of BEANBOY and AIRBALL, there's still time!

Now tell me who inspires and fires your writing!

SHARIN' THE LOVE

This weekend I met author/illustrator Lisa Harkrader at a Kansas SCBWI event. Her book, THE ADVENTURES OF BEANBOY, is released tomorrow. To help celebrate the brilliancy of Kansas authors (she illustrated it, too, and the art is hilarious!) and to show my appreciation to you, my blog readers, I'm GIVING AWAY signed copies of THE ADVENTURES OF BEANBOY and Lisa's AIRBALL: MY LIFE IN BRIEFS.

Read all about the inspiration behind Lisa's latest book here.

How do you win? Simply tell me what super hero you'd like to be (one you make up or one that's "real") in the comments. I'll announce the winner next Monday.

Me? I'd like to be OctoMom (not THAT one!), so I could multi-task easier. How about you??

HOPPERS!

They ate the crops, the wool off the sheep, and if you stood still long enough, the clothes off your back. The grasshopper plague that swept through Kansas in 1874 left many settlers destitute and forced them to move back east. My story based on this terrible time, HADDIE AND THE HOPPERS, has been published to the classroom history website, hisstories.net. I'm very fond of this story. In 2008 it was the Kansas Voices Adult Fiction winner (titled CHRISTMAS CROP). This is a great site for anyone who loves historical stories!