Upcoming Agent Spotlight Interviews & Guest Posts

  • CoCo Freeman Agent Spotlight Interview and Query Critique Giveaway on 11/11/2024
  • Courtney Donovan Agent Spotlight Interview and Query Critique Giveaway on 11/20/2024
  • Shannon Hassan Agent Spotlight Interview and Query Critique Giveaway on 12/9/2024
  • Vicky Weber Agent Spotlight Interview and Query Critique Giveaway on 12/11/2024

Agent Spotlight & Agent Spotlight Updates

  • Agent Spotlights & Interviews have been updated through the letter "K" as of 3/28/2024 and many have been reviewed by the agents. Look for more information as I find the time to update more agent spotlights.

WELCOME TO MY MONDAY POSTS

First, I’m happy to announce the winners of Cheryl Klein’s Second Sight: An Editor's Talks on Writing, Revising, and Publishing Books for Children or Young Adults. Cheryl generously donated a copy of her book for the giveaway so there are two winners. The winners are:

PAULA and KANGAROOBEE

Congrats! E-mail me your address so that I can have your book mailed to you.

Today I’m starting my Monday posts. I’m so excited to be here. I thought I’d start by telling you a little bit about myself.

1. At my day job, I’m an attorney for a prepaid legal services plan for UAW workers. I practice in consumer litigation, including collection defense, bankruptcy, and mortgage foreclosure prevention. So with the economy lately, I keep plenty busy.

2. I have an awesome family—a 13 year old daughter we adopted from China who will be in high school next year (Yikes!) and a husband who has chronic, pretty serious lung problems. Thankfully his health is maintaining.

3. I squeeze my writing in when I can. My middle grade fantasy is about an adopted 13-year-old girl who must discover how her adopted mother’s love unlocks her magical powers or lose her best friend forever. I’ve been working on it since the summer before my daughter started first grade. So yeah, it’s taken me a long time. But I never wanted to be a writer as a kid. I’ve had to learn from lots of mistakes. But it’s almost done. Promise. And I’m even outlining a new YA fantasy.

Here’s what I’ll be blogging about. Once a month, I’ll talk about something related to writing. There will also be lots of author interviews. I can’t promise they’ll all include a book giveaway, but the ones I have lined up so far do. And I’m going to allow international participants for now. I’m interviewing many, but not all, debut and middle grade authors. I’ve noticed that middle grade authors don’t get as much attention as YA authors so I want to spotlight some of them. And I’ll start an Ask the Expert series where I interview kids between 5th and 12th grade about what they’re reading.

If you’re an author with a book coming out and would like to be interviewed, contact me. And if you’re on Facebook, friend me. I’m not on Twitter.

So what about you? Tell us what you write and blog about. And next week come back for an interview with Terry Johnson where we discuss her debut middle grade book, DOGSLED DREAMS.

Posted by Natalie

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

Welcome to Mondays! Looking forward to your interview with Terry, love her book!

Diane said...

Happy Monday to you too! Looking forward to your posts!!! :O)

Carolina M. Valdez Schneider said...

Sounds like you have some super stuff lined up, Natalie! Great planning. I never know quite what I'm going to do. I'm so disorganized.

So excited you're almost done with your middle grade! You've been working on it a long time. It'll be such a rush when you release it into the wild!

Lydia Sharp said...

Awesome!

Deni Krueger said...

I am really excited about your focus on middle grade authors. I find so much stuff on the web for YA, but hardly any for middle grade.

Natalie Aguirre said...

Thanks so much for your support Deb, Diane, Carolina, Lydia, and Deni. I appreciate it.

Casey McCormick said...

Happy first official post, Natalie!!

I'm really excited about everything you have planned. Thanks again for joining forces with me!

Caroline Starr Rose said...

I'd love an interview, Natalie!

Buffy Andrews said...

Awesome Nat. (Doing happy dance) I'm so excited for this new partnership between you and Casey.

Kristine Asselin said...

Great news! Can't wait to read more about TerryLynn. I just got Dogsled Dreams over the weekend. Happy Monday!

Heather Kelly said...

I love Terry Lynn, and her book is awesome. Looking forward to the interview. I'm so glad you've found a blogging niche, Natalie!!

YAY!

Lisa Nowak said...

Sounds like a great lineup, Natalie.

Jenny Lundquist said...

Congratulations on joining Lit Rambles! I love the idea of interviewing kids to see what they're reading. Will be looking forward to your posts.

Beth said...

Looking forward to your Monday posts! And I'll look for you on Facebook.

S. L. (Sandy) Carlson said...

Wow. Natalie. Glad to see you here, and regular-like. I look forward to reading your posts and insights.

Laura Pauling said...

Welcome Natalie! I won Dogsled Dreams in a contest and can't wait to read it when it arrives in the mail!

Alexandra Loewen said...

You've given us a lot to look forward to, Natalie! I'm particularly excited about the focus on MG, and the interviews with real kids. The insights of kids are critical to those who write for them, but I don't think we hear about this nearly enough. Thank you!

Paula said...

First:
THANK YOU for Cheryl Klein's book!!! REALLY looking forward to digging in and imagine it will be inspirational. Can't believe I won, again (I was chosen in the Give-it-Forward event Casey did.) Don't hate me everyone. Maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket.

Second:
I always find it interesting to learn what writer's day jobs are. Thanks for sharing. And I hope your husband remains stable.

Third:
I am SO excited to hear what the kids will have to say. I learned TONS of unexpected things when an eleven year old beta reader read my MG fantasy.

Fourth:
You asked about our own blog posts. I post about things that I've learned or found inspirational in hopes it might help someone else. I'm starting an monthly interview post to spotlight serious writers who are in search of an agent or publisher, someone with a blog to share. Anyone interested? Let me know : )

Fifth:
So nice to "meet" you. I look forward to Mondays.

Suzie F. said...

Sounds like you have a lot of great things planned, Natalie! I'm looking forward to your posts.

Natalie Aguirre said...

Thanks everyone for all the support. I'm so glad you're looking forward to my posts.

S.A. Larsenッ said...

I love your story, Natalie. But you already know that. LOL And Terry...so awesome!! Nice job.

Anonymous said...

I agree that it would be nice to read more about the middle grade books and authors.

Bethany Neal said...

Yeah! First post! Congrats, Natalie. :)

I just started my blog ( www.thewritertorium.blogspot.com )since my YA novel is officially started it's looooong journey to (hopeful) publication. I've been blogging about all the fabulous insanity that goes along with being a newbie writer in the hopes to vent--I mean commiserate--I mean help/entertain other newbies.

I'm a comment whore, so stop by and let me know what you think. Natalie already has a few times-- thank you!

Sara {Rhapsody and Chaos} said...

yay! I'm looking forward to your Monday posts :)

Munk said...

Another reason to look forward to Mondays.
I am a nerd.
At work, I do nerdy things. I nerd hard on my blog as well, and my current writing project may only appeal to nerds. munkdavis.blogspot.com

Natalie said...

That's so cool that you're writing a middle grade fantasy! If I could ever get my motivation behind me (and some time away from college), I'd love to try my hand at writing a book!

Rosanne Parry said...

Thanks for putting the spotlight on MG books. Here's another blog that does the same.
From the Mixed Up Files of Middle Grade Authors www.mixedupfiles.com

Paula Gurrie said...

Natalie -- congrats on this! So exciting that you are interviewing MG folks as we always get lost in the shuffle! Big congratulatory hugs!