Sylvia McNicoll

This week I visited Central Public Junior School in Hamilton to perform my writing workshop. I also read to them from Revenge on the Fly, a story about 12 year old William Alton, an Irish boy who emigrates to Canada in 1912 and ends up participating in the Hamilton…

Working with 50 grade 7 students in the morning and 40 grade 8s in the afternoon proved no greater challenge than working with 30 kids at a time. Except when it came to one on one editing, that went out the computer screen since we had to divide the groups into two to…

Readers would probably be shocked at how much research goes into a work of fiction. When I wrote A Different Kind of Beauty and Beauty Returns, I needed to get into the head of a blind 16 year old boy so I interviewed some blind people. I hate the way that sounds and…

First a two hour drive on a clear sunny day with no traffic at all. A good omen. Then at noon an interview with a journalism student, Nancy Ellis. Her story on me counts for 25% of her final grade, a replacement for a midterm. No pressure. She has to tape the…

Why film a trailer for a series of books that has already been out for awhile? Does a book have any value once it’s off the boxstore bookshelf? Certainly in the past, kids’ books had a shelf life of over ten years. Of course most bookstores don’t…

Last Tuesday Dying to Go Viral sold to my favourite publisher in Norway, Sweden and Finland. Hurray! After a few cover attempts failed for the Canadian publisher, my husband Bob shot the cover for Last Chance for Paris. Turned out to be my favourite cover of all time….