A Work in Progress

I have a couple of things to share with you, and they all have to do with one of the best genres around: Middle Grade Fiction. 1. My fellow friend and author extraordinaire -- Kristiana Gregory -- just received a gold medal honor from Literary Classics, for her book Stalked . Yes, the book is fantastic! And yes, the book is more for young adults than kids. But, if you're over twelve, this book is for you regardless. I highly recommend it, too. Historical, fast-paced and action-packed, you'll be reading until way past your bedtime. 2. Another great read, called Dead Man's Hand by Eddie Jones will be released in a few days, and it looks riveting. Great for girls and boys, it had adventure written all over-- and absolutely inside -- the cover of it. Eddie Jones is a wonderful writer, speaker, teacher, and great-all around guy. I can say this because Eddie practices what he preaches. Got a middle grade boy in your house looking for a super sized order of adventure with

I've written about this topic before: Growing where you are planted; becoming the best you can with what you're doing despite your circumstances. And the truth of it is, while I write about it and talk about it like it's easy to do, I hate it. Hard work is just that ... hard work. And I still don't like it. And who wants to write anyway, only to feel like they're going nowhere? No one. No one likes to see zero progress. No one wants their work to be in vain. But is our work truly in vain? If it's to the best of our abilities, whatever we are doing from writing to cleaning the house, it isn't in vain because someone ultimately benefits whether it's a clean house hours from now, or an actual well-written book WRITTEN years and years from now. It has to benefit someone. Yourself, namely. And if you don't grow where you were planted -- if you don't sit down and write or work hard or sweat out the tough things when you don't want to --