I’m thrilled to announce that my new YA novel, How to Tend a Grave, will be published by Great Plains Teen Fiction in Spring 2012. I’ll be working with the awesome editor Anita Daher. The book features two grieving teens who meet in a cemetery and … well, more about all that another day.

In honour of signing the contract I decided I needed a new website and blog. 

For the past year, while How to Tend a Grave was out looking for a publisher, I’ve been working on my first historical YA novel. Set in 1868, it made me more concerned with my protagonist’s hand-written letters in pen and ink than in figuring out how to use Facebook or Twitter. But now that the manuscript is finished and under consideration, it’s time for me to return to the present and catch up with social media.

I find the Internet amazing but scary. Like many writers, I’m worried I’ll be so distracted by what’s out there that I’ll never write anything but blog posts and tweets again. Still, the chance to connect with the online reading and writing community proved impossible to resist. So here I am.

Many thanks to Crystal Stranaghan for designing my new website and explaining so patiently how everything works.  Also to Debbie Ohi for her wonderful Writer’s Guide to Twitter, and to Shrinking Violet Promotions for their very helpful blog and Online Persona Workshop for introverts. I highly recommend them all.