This is an updated version of a post that originally appeared in the June 2019 edition of my newsletter Readiculous Musings. You can subscribe for it HERE . It is the one month anniversary of WICKED FOX coming out. So, I think I am feeling a bit nostalgic and I am thinking a lot about what has brought me to this point. And one of the biggest factors was having a good community around me. Now I know that this phrase can be vague, especially to people just joining the writing

If you’re buying Wicked Fox or requesting it from your library, I’d love to give you a gift to show my appreciation! These beautiful...

This post originally appeared in the September 2018 edition of my newsletter Readiculous Musings. You can subscribe for it  HERE . (I’m stealing and updating from an old post I wrote about finding my voice and my ownvoices stories) This summer I had an awesome August full of things that give me such joy and hope as an Asian reader and creator! I grew up without seeing myself in mainstream media and I never knew how it affected my perception of myself until I went away to coll

So, I am stealing an idea from my writer BFF, Claribel Ortega and posting some of my content a month after it appears in my newsletter. It won’t be everything, just stuff that I think might be interesting to people and probably anything that is a record of my journey in publishing! So here we go! This post originally appeared in the July 2018 edition of my newsletter Readiculous Musings. You can subscribe for it HERE . Things are pretty hard these days. And it’s a time where

I’m back! Hello strangers, remember me? I’m the person that’s supposed to keep this blog updated, even though I haven’t posted in MONTHS. I apologize for my LONG absence, but to be fair you can still find me pretty regularly over at Writer’s Block Party ! And I have been much better at keeping up my new(ish) Authortube/Booktube vlog over at YouTube. STILL, this blog was my first love and I’ve been horrible at keeping it updated. Partly because I  did want to try out those o

The Real Reason We Need Diverse Books Eight kids show Matt de la Pena the the real reason We Need Diverse Books. *mic drop* Visit our Indiegogo campaign to support our mission: http://igg.me/at/diversebooks TRANSCRIPT: Matt de la Peña: So, hey guys. I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about books. I’m an author, right. Since there was more interest in my Diversity Conversation post than I expected (and because I do not consider myself an expert on this topic), I t

In honor of Author Mentor Match, I made ANOTHER vlog. I know, I know. You’re thinking, “Kat, can you calm down on these vlogs?” And my...

I’ve watched the conversation around diversity change over the past few years when it comes to literature and YA/kidlit in particular. I took interest for obvious reasons, I am a writer of color who wants to write about my own experiences and heritage. However, even as a POC I was not prepared for some of the hard lessons I’ve learned over the past few years. And I came to realize that it’s because I didn’t have the foundation for it yet. I had to build that first before I co

I want to write an honest post about something that has always worried me and probably will always worry me as I keep writing about my heritage. It’s a special kind of imposter syndrome, the fear that I am appropriating my own culture for my art. There are so many conversations about #ownvoices and #ownyourown. There are so many people saying meaningful and important things. Sometimes I try to chime in, but I always feel like others say it better, so signal boosting has been

This week is the start of #OwnYourOwn started by the lovely Kaye (@GildedSpine). YA Interrobang wrote a wonderful intro article about it...

I was reading  Miss Snark’s First Victim  and Authoress had a really great point about hiring an editor for revisions. To paraphrase  she pretty much says that you shouldn’t hire her for her professional critiquing services if your work has never had eyes on it (i.e. a CP or Beta Reader). For one thing, those people read your work for free, for another, they catch some of the small stuff (i.e. grammar, incorrect tenses, plot holes, etc). When you hire someone to edit, you wan