Fleur Bradley's Page

It ain’t easy being a writer. And I’m not talking about the hard work, the solitude, the craft—that’s a post for someone else’s blog. I’m talking about the money we want to spend wisely. Namely, the money most of us don’t have.

And this isn’t about the not-enough-to-live-on advances either, or the… Continue

After hearing about it at FiveAwesomeYAFans, I read Catherine Ryan Hyde’s Diary of a Witness. The cover is really nice (you can see it here), simple and foreboding, which made me hope that maybe this was a mystery.

It was not. It was a real page-turner all the same though, so I thought I would tell you what this book is all about. Our main character is Ernie, who i… Continue

As always, here are your Friday YA-related links, and some sundry items I felt like adding:

You can nominate your favorite (recent) YA book for the Cybils—check it out here.

At Teenreads, there are several contests to win books (you have to scroll down a bit to get to that part). Penguin also has a contest where you can win some classic books, more on that… Continue

After reading this article in The Village Voice (warning—lots of f-bombs), I got to thinking. Well, first I was laughing, then I got to thinking. Mostly about how dumb some people are, and then about how incredibly valid this point is: have respect for the years it takes to hone a craft, whether it’s painting, writing, or editing, whatever.

For this Friday link post, I thought I would step away… Continue

Now that I got my Edgar rant off my chest, and my soapbox has been reinstated as a coffee table, I thought I should think about criteria for my list of YA mysteries. Since everyone else seems to be so liberal with their interpretation of the genre.

So here are my four must-haves:

1. Must have a mystery as the central plot. This means the solving of the mystery has to be at the front of the story, and at the top of lead character’s list. Navel-gazing and peer pressure allowed, but it had… Continue