Unlocking Books discussion

During the month of January, the authors of the anthology Transcendent: Tales of the Paranormal will join us for Q&A.

In Transcendent, Melanie wrote "Ryan's Wish," a story about an old boyfriend back from the dead.

Melanie is the acclaimed author of several great YA books such as The Dating Deal and When Kyle Came Back.

If you have any questions for her, please post them here.

Melanie, when did you start writing and why?

I’d always loved writing—always. And wrote all the time. But I didn’t really think about writing for the public and getting paid for it until I had children and I would read them stories from children’s magazines, and I’d think, “I can write stuff like this.” So I did. I sold my very first story to ‘Teen Magazine for $500. I used the money to buy my kids bunk beds and I got a lot of fan mail from teens. It was awesome. I was hooked!

I went on to have over sixty short stories published in magazines such as Highlights and Woman’s World and many, many more in ‘Teen. I also had lot of stories published in Chicken Soup for the Soul books. But I had to put off writing full-length novels until all my kids started school because I could fit writing short stories into their naptimes, but novels were too time consuming and complicated for me to work on in such tiny spurts of time. But I’m so thankful I had the short story experience as it boosted my confidence in my writing and I got to work with a lot of amazing editors and hear from fans. (And got paid right up front for my work.) It rocked!

Short stories are, in many ways, so much more fun than a novel. You get to feel the satisfaction of a job well done without tearing out your soul and bleeding all over the pages--er, computer since this is the Age of Technology.