Julie Berry's Blog

I've been asked many times how to format a children's picture book manuscript for submission, so I thought I'd create a blog post with my advice, such as it is. I'm speaking here to writers, not to illustrators, nor to writer-illustrators, who are proposing a book they plan to both write and illustrate. Expectations are very different in those cases. 

For those of us who only write the books, questions surrounding formatting bleed easily into territory where beginning writers often make mistakes ...

Lovely War releases in paperback today!
The brilliant folks at Viking Children’s Books / Penguin Random House have done an outstanding job once again of creating a truly gorgeous package for this book. I loved the hardcover, but I might just love the paperback more, and not only because it includes so many nice things people have said about the book. (But I do like that, too. Can’t lie.)
Since the hardcover release nearly a year ago, Lovely Warhas enjoyed a pretty incredible ride. It has won...

Today, my first picture book releases into the world: Long Ago, On a Silent Night , with illustration by the incredibly talented Annie Won.

It's published in hardcover (ISBN 978-1338277722) from Scholastic via their Orchard Books imprint, and is available at your local independent bookstore, or anywhere books are sold. 

Long ago, in a dusty barn, a mother took a child in her  arms, wrapped him snug, made his bed in the hay. He was her gift that Christmas Day. There's no sweet...

Today's post is a keynote address I gave two years ago at a writing conference in Arizona. (ANWA, Gilbert AZ, 9/15/17.) It's long, but I post it here in hopes that it will offer some encouragement, or at least, companionship, for writers.

If my remarks are at all worthy of a title, and you can be the judge, it would be something like this: You Want to Write? What’s the Matter With You? – or – Ye Shall Do the Work, and the Work Shall Set You Free**From writer’s block, self-doubt, self-loathing,...

My newest novel, Lovely War, is finally here. I’m so excited to share it with the world.
Hades, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, & Apollo.
All illustrations by Laura Molnar.Lovely War tells the story of two pairs of young lovers who fall in love during the final year of World War I. In an unusual twist, their stories are told by Greek gods. Hephaestus, god of forges and fire, catches his wife, Aphrodite, goddess of love, in the arms of her lover (and Hephaestus’s brother), Ares, god of war, i...

I went a little hog-wild with book shopping this Christmas season, but supporting indie bookstores, authors, and literacy feels like a triple win to me. Here are the books I bought this year. I hope you look them up and buy a bunch of them, if only because retrieving all these hyperlinks took about a month. You're welcome. ;) 
For the teens on my list: An Ember in the Ashes  by Sabaa Tahir. Snagged this at Vroman’s Hastings Ranch. Bridge of Clay  by Markus Zusak. Signed ed...

Today’s post comes from an email I received from a writer friend. I'm sharing with her permission.

I've been working on a new novel, and I find that I'm continually battling: 1) the fear of plot-- it's not good enough, it's boring, it's going nowhere, etc. 2) the destructive force of too many ideas crashing down and getting mixed in my head. I often feel as though I'm in the middle of a Seurat painting and I'm so worried and distracted by the dots that I can't find the big picture. I try to wr...

One hundred years ago today, the guns fell silent, after four and a half years of brutal, mechanized, devastating combat. 
Historians will disagree somewhat on the numbers, but the Great War caused close to 40 million casualties, of which not quite half were deaths. Of the deaths, approximately 40% were civilian casualties. 
It's hard to wrap your head around the concept of seventeen million people killed in a war. Think of the staggering loss we feel at a tragedy like a mass shooting...

I've been sitting on this exciting news for too long: I have a new book baby today! Only this time, it's not a physical book. It's an Audible Exclusive audiobook. Wishes & Wellingtons , read by the one, the only, the inimitable Jayne Entwistle. Jacket art by Alyssa Petersen. I'm so excited.

The idea first begin on a red-eye flight. I'm not sure why, but sitting there, doodling in my idea journal, I thought of the phrase, "Sardiney Genie." I like genies. Who doesn't? I like sardines. Who doe...

You’re at an author event or a conference panel, listening to an author speak. They’re funny, smart, compassionate, interesting. You feel a connection. You’ve read their book, or you plan to. The panel opens up for audience questions. You’d like to ask one, because there’s so much you’d like to know, and more, because you’d like to have a human interaction with this person with whom you’ve had, or will have, a literary interaction.
What should you ask them?
The mind goes blank.
It does for me,...