The Art of Crafting Middle-Grade Fiction with Author Janet Fox

Delve into the intricacies of writing for middle-grade readers with award-winning author and book coach Janet Fox and host Stacy Frazer. 

Janet shares her journey from writing for her dyslexic son to becoming a mentor for aspiring writers, offering invaluable insights into the importance of understanding your audience and creating resonant characters. 

She also discusses the challenges of balancing character emotions and actions to move the story forward effectively. 

With practical tips on word count, family themes, and character development, this episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to write compelling middle-grade fiction. 

Don't miss Janet's advice on pushing your craft to new heights and how to navigate self-doubt in your writing journey.

01:17 Episode Overview and Special Guest Introduction

02:36 Janet Fox's Journey to Writing and Mentorship

04:02 Crafting Stories for Middle-Grade Audience

05:45 Understanding Middle-Grade Age Groups

08:45 Janet's Writing Process and Challenges

14:06 Key Considerations for Middle-Grade Writers

17:50 Balancing Interiority and Action in Middle-Grade Fiction

24:41 Janet's Personal Writing Struggles and Growth

28:48 Overcoming Self-Doubt and Persistence in Writing

37:46 Current Projects and Mentorship Programs

39:25 Closing Remarks and Contact Information

To connect with Janet Fox:

https://janetsfox.com/

https://janetfox.substack.com/

https://www.instagram.com/janetsfox/

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorJanetFox/

https://www.pinterest.com/janetsfox/

Transcript

 Hi writer. Welcome back to another episode of the Write It Scared Podcast I'm your host Stacy and today is episode number 16, and we are going to dig into the craft of writing for the middle-grade audience. I have a very special guest interview for you today. I thought it would dovetail nicely with episode number 14, where we talked to middle-grade horror author, Wendy Parris about her experience of writing in this genre. So now we're going to turn our focus more into craft, and it is my pleasure to introduce you to Janet Fox. 

Janet is the perfect person to talk to about the craft of writing middle-grade fiction. She is an award-winning author with over 25 years of experience in the writing industry. Her 12 award-winning books span the spectrum from picture books to young adult in a broad variety of genres. She has a passion for the magic of storytelling. 

And as a writer, she strives to create books that help grow young hearts and minds. And as a mentor and a book coach, she supports writers on their journey as storytellers. So if you were interested in learning how to craft stories for the middle-grade audience, then this episode is for you.

Stacy

Hi, Janet. Thanks for being on the show today.

Janet

 Hi, Stacy. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. Me too. 

Stacy

Will you please share a bit more about your journey to becoming a writer and a writing mentor with our listeners?

Janet

Sure, my journey to writing began when my son was little and we discovered that he was dyslexic. So, I began to try and write little stories for him. I'd always been writing on the side of all the other things that I've done in my life. And I was creating these little stories, and I didn't know what I was doing.

I had no clue. Which brings me to a sort of teachable moment: So many writers that I work with are young, either young writers who are just starting out but don't understand the craft, or older writers who've gone back to it years after they've raised their kids and read stories to their kids and, you know, Don't know the audience.

So it's trying to bring together those two things, understanding the craft and the audience today. That's what I do as a book coach. And so as a writer, I really had to work hard to develop the craft from the ground up in terms of writing for children, because I didn't know how to do it at the beginning, even though I was, you know, a good writer.

It's a different approach to writing, so it's a whole different approach to writing for children than to write for adults, to write for yourself, or to write poetry as we all do in high school. No. So, right. Yeah. 

Stacy

What draws you to write for the middle-grade audience and in, around those, those themes and, and work with writers who are interested in that genre or that category?

Janet

 It's my favorite age group to, to write for. And the reason I. think that's true is, and I think this is true of a lot of writers, we feel like we're closest in age to some particular age. Some, for some of us, it's teen years. For some of us, it's pre teen years. For me, it's like 12. I really remember my  year 12, 13 deeply and emotionally.

They were, they were very formative years for me. And the books that I was reading at the time were things like the Narnia books. And so, when I started writing for children, I was writing YA, which is, which is interesting. My, my very first published books were, were three YA novels. And I loved them.They were historical fiction. I loved them. I was very attached to them.  I found my way into middle grade through that sort of fantasy world of Narnia, again. And when I started writing The Charmed Children of Rooksgill Castle, which is my first middle grade, I just felt like I had come home, so to speak.

So, it, because it brought all those things together. That,  you know, twelve year old, sensibility and the fantasy that I loved and some history too. So it kind of combined all those things and brought me right back to where I, where I started emotionally as a reader, when I read the Narnia books when I was a kid.That's what I love about that age group. 

Stacy

Can you speak a little bit about the age groups for middle grades, like what the target audience is in the age group that we're talking about here?  

Janet

That is such a great question because again, a lot of writers struggle with this. They don't  understand the age differences.

They don't understand that, But 11 is not 12, it's not 13. There really, there is really a spectrum here. So as an example, I think the book that is for my youngest middle grade audience is Carry Me Home, my most recent middle grade novel.  Then Term Children of Rooksgill Castle and Artifact Hunters are for kids who are,  and I would say Carry Me Home is good for kids who are eight.Nine, 10, even that age range. Then the the two middle books Charm Children of Rookskill Castle and Artifact Hunters would be for 10, 11. And then my newest book that's coming out next fall The Mystery of Mystic Mountain is for slightly older kids. It's a little bit transitional as my character is a little bit transitional.She's just about to turn 13. So, you know, 11, 12, 13, even, even 14 year olds would, would really enjoy that book. So so it's a spectrum and you have to think about  I, I like to create and I help my, my writers create a reader avatar for every book that they're writing, because I think that's the, the way to understand the kid that you really want to pick up this book and read it.

If you get that, I think you've done a better job of presenting the material in an age-appropriate way. 

Stacy

Yeah, I think that's such a smart idea, and we'll get into the craft a little bit, but I feel like that's such a risk: imposing your knowledge as an adult and your biases onto the audience that you're writing for who don't have those. Right? And when you're an adult, your 12-year-old experience is different from the 12-year-old reader's experience that's out there. 

Janet

Oh, so totally, absolutely. That's another problem that I see for new writers, that they, they have, you know, aged out so far that they really are not in touch with what kids think and do today.

And how much more mature a lot of 12 year olds are today than, than even 10 years ago and certainly 20, 30 years ago. So, 

Stacy

So, the age range for middle grade can start at eight and go to twelve ish, even 14. 

Janet

Even 14. There's kind of that gray area. Same, you know, you transition into the YA space and then you transition from  YA to new adult later down the line between the 17 Yeah.

Stacy 

Yeah, there's always a gray area and I'm one of those writers who likes to write in the gray and it's always, it's always, it makes it harder. So you've written a lot of books. You've published a lot of books. So tell us a bit about what your process is like for going from ideation to. the point where you've got a polished manuscript. 

Janet

Yeah, it's different for every single book Carry Me Home is my most recent middle grade. It's for a slightly younger middle-grade audience.It's about two girls living in a car and that's not a secret because it happens on page one and their dad is missing on page one So the older sister who is 11 is trying to take care of her younger sister who is eight and keep their secret of where of the fact that they're living alone in a car because she's afraid that they'll be separated in foster care and that story Came to me as an idea that  I heard a radio program about a family living in a car, two parents, three children, all young, younger than 15,  and both parents working two jobs.

The kids going to school, and I tried, I was beginning to imagine what would it feel like to be, especially a 12-year-old girl, you know, you're kind of on the cusp of maturity, you're embarrassed, you're humiliated, you want to wear the right clothes, but you, A, can't afford them, and B, you have to put them on in a car in the morning, you have to do your homework and try to get ahead, and you can't because There are, you know, four other people around you in this tiny little space.

So,  I thought about that story for five years. I didn't write a word. I was, you know, just circulating in the back of my brain while I was working on other projects.  And one morning I literally woke up. Woke up and knew exactly how to write that book and I wrote it in one month, which is totally rare.

I'm just gonna say it right now. That is not the usual way things go from Brain to paper, but this one, I think I thought about it for so long that it wrote itself, and I felt like I was channeling something. So, that is not the case for all my books, and The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle is a case in point.

That took me two and a half years just to write. The book, you know, write a first draft, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise. It was a hard slog. I love that book passionately. It's my book, most popular book or one of them. And, but it, it was a much harder slog than carry me home, which, because I didn't put a word on paper, I think was really formed inside my brain slowly.

And over those five years, I was thinking about it.  So, I would say the process is different. With every book but generally speaking, The idea grabs me or it doesn't. And when an idea grabs me, it just won't let go. So that's, that's the, that's the fundamental process is just finding a way in to that idea in some fashion.

Stacy

And The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle, that was your first middle Grade. Yes,  middle grade. The others had been YA.

Do you think that was part of, the reason it was hard that it was a transition book? 

Janet

No, I think it was more complicated. It was a more complex story than the YAs because I was marrying fantasy history and a story about kids who were taken out of London during the London Blitz,  and, and so it, it had a lot of different elements going on. It also had, you know, the war.  because I, I introduced a spy and an enigma machine and my protagonist's dad was a spy. So a lot of layers to it and many things going on.

But I think the thing that I struggled with the most, and I credit my editor for pushing me on it, was the antagonist. I was trying to be too nice to her because her wound, her bad thing, her thing that made her so evil was something that I personally wrestled with.

So I was protecting her a bit for a long time until I said, you know what?  I just got to let her be bad.  Very, very bad. So, and when, when I did, I think that's when I finally turned the corner.

Stacy

 It's amazing how much our internal psyches.  As the, as the author subconsciously affects some of the decisions we make on the page. 

Janet

Totally. Mm hmm. 

Stacy

Totally. And it takes a while to dig into that and, and to notice that, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for sharing about your process. So a big part of this podcast is dedicated to helping writers discover and learn the tools they need to craft and publish books that they're proud of, but also help them work through the variations of self doubt that hold them back.

So from a mentor's perspective who has written many, many books for children what are. The major things a writer needs to consider when writing for the middle grade category first and, and foremost,  do they need to take, for example, word count into consideration?  How deeply do they need to understand their audience?

Janet

Yeah. Word count. I've said this to writers who get worried about word count, I say, just forget about it. Ignore it. Stop, stop fretting. A book is as long as a book needs to be. That said you don't want to write a 90, 000, 100, 000 word middle grade. It's too, that's, that's a bit too long, even in the fantasy sci-fi realm, which does exist for middle graders.

I think the first thing to think about for the middle-grade audience is creating a character that resonates at that middle-grade level in terms of interests, in terms of identity, in terms of connecting emotionally with the middle-grade audience. And that's why I, again, encourage my, my writers to create that reader avatar in a deep way, not just a superficial way, not just, you know, What they like and what they do in school,  the deep emotional things that they're struggling with,  because kids in the middle-grade space as we, as we've already talked about, have this wide age range and therefore a very wide series of issues that personal issues that they deal with.

And one of them is who are, who am I,  what kind of person do I want to be. I remember struggling that when I was in middle-grade age, you know, what kind of person. Do I want to be? And I think everybody addresses that at some level, whether consciously or subconsciously.  So, I think creating a character who is addressing that question at a deep level is really key to attaching to the reader.

And then, and then the content in a middle grade. Middle grade readers are keen on reading about family connections.  You know, their parents, their siblings, and usually middle grade content is geared towards cementing that family connection or dealing with loss in the term in terms of that family connection.

So, because when, when you get into the teens, they're talking about independence and peer groups. and and freeing themselves from the oversight of family. But the middle graders are still dealing with having a family and how it feels to have a family, whether it's  Whether it's your family or a found family and creating that found family if you don't have a family, but trying to bring the family together is really, really important in the middle-grade mindset.

So, so I do encourage those writers who want to write for middle grade to look at family as the focus for their stories, because that's where kids of that age are concentrating their emotions,  if that makes sense. 

Stacy

That is great advice. So it's kind of like scratching the surface of the question of who am I in relationship to the family that surrounds me. And then as they get older, who am I in the context of the broader scope of their social network? 

Janet

Absolutely right. Yeah, that's a great way to say it. Yeah. Yeah. 

Stacy 

So, what would you say are some common struggles that writers have when trying to craft a middle grade story?  

 Janet

I think the first one is knowing how much to invest in in interiority.

A lot of writers are writing the story and things are going on,  but they're not actually putting the character's Reactions fully on the page, and so it's a balancing act, of course, you don't want all, you know, all sorts of rumination, but you do need, we do need, to find out what a character is actually thinking and feeling in a moment in any given moment, and there are a lot of ways to do that, obviously you don't want to tell the reader that, you want to show them that, so there, there are tools that I have them work with from whether it's dialogue or whether it's act, you know, action, physical action whether it's the interchange between two characters or whether it's actual interior thinking like a reflection in that moment of reflection.

So I think that's one of the biggest things I see with all my writers who come into this sort of. At the very beginning, they're struggling to get their character's emotions on the page in some fashion without telling the reader what they're doing. So that's the biggest thing. The second biggest thing is something that I know you're going to be familiar with, and that's the cause-and-effect aspect of storytelling.

That every action of the character has to force a reaction and, you know a, that effect that drives the story forward.  And so they, sometimes, characters will be on the page doing things, but they're not really, they're not really moving the story forward because they're not creating any effects. And that's largely because we tend to protect all our characters all the time, right?

We, we, oh, I don't want to hurt her feelings.  And that's just not a good thing. Good approach. You must make your character do stupid things, make mistakes, and fall flat on their face. And then, Oh, that's not a good idea. I better not do that again.  

Stacy

Yeah, I honestly I think that's true. No matter what category or age group you're writing for.It's really easy to want them to be complete in the beginning instead of allowing them to grow into who you imagine them to be right after they've learned the lessons. Yes. I have been so guilty of that. Well, she's perfect. There is this problem that she has to solve, but you know, she's, she's, she's perfect. 

Yeah, that's not. That isn't why we come to the story. That does not convey empathy. It takes a while to figure that out. Absolutely. So. Just to recap what you were saying there,  is that understanding who you're writing for, and then getting their emotions on the page, now, getting the emotions on the page for, you know, a middle-grade character,  is that, do you think that's different than it is for an adult character?

Janet

Cause you have to think of their perspective. 12 year old, like a 10 or a 12 year old's perspective their lens, I'm not sure how much introspection they will have as compared to, you know, someone old, like me,  older, like me. Right.  So it will be a lot about their observations in any particular scene, what they're seeing, and how they're interpreting it.

Because you're absolutely right. The middle grader is going to interpret this.  And start to absorb it and, and I'll use again, carry me home as an example.  My main character, Lulu, says at one point that she doesn't cry and that she swallows a lot of her feelings. Now, she doesn't say she's swallowing her feelings, but she doesn't cry.

She, she cannot cry. And and yet she's been through a lot up to that point. And what she observes is one of her teachers gets all emotional over the littlest things. And the, and what, and the, the, scene that she recollects that her teacher getting emotional about is when sandhill cranes fly over, and I don't know if you know about sandhill cranes, but  I lived in Texas and now we live in Montana and sand hill cranes winter in Texas and then summer in Montana, so I've seen those flyovers They're really high they go in gigantic groups of birds, and they have the, the eeriest call.

It's a very eerie, breathtaking sound. So when they fly over, it's like, oh, you know, I mean, you have to stop and look. It's an emotional moment. This teacher gets emotional. So Lulu's observing the teacher as she sees the birds. She can't get emotional, but she has a reflection of the teacher's feelings about watching and listening to these birds.

She was reflecting emotion in a distant way, trying to understand that emotion and how to express it. And she felt like, why is she crying? But then again, it is kind of interesting and pretty and weird. So, that's trying to get in that middle-grade mindset, that head is really about the individual kid.

And thinking about it from their true deep perspective in that very moment and in that very scene. And how they're interpreting what they're seeing and reflecting on it that the reader is going to say, Oh, I know what that feels like. Oh, I know just what that feels like. She might not be able to say it, but I get it. 

So it's a little hard to capture that in kind of me telling you how to capture it, but I know how to entice it off of my own writing, and I know how to tell a writer, bring this out here because this is how she's feeling and I want to feel it too. So, let's see how you can work that to make that scene come alive for the reader.And the emotions come alive. 

Stacy  

Yeah. And, that interiority is really key in understanding the characters. Why they're doing this, why they're taking the action that they are. Yeah. And, and it is, it's just, it's a skill, I think, and you get better as you practice it.

Janet

Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely true.

Stacy 

So from the perspective of writing from this genre as a writer, what do you personally struggle with? What's hard for you? Or at least. What used to be pretty hard for you? Where did you struggle?  And how has that, you know, maybe changed for you since we were talking about practice, right? How has that changed for you over the years as you've written more books? 

Janet 

Well, I remember my first editor very well. With my first novel, the YA novel and every page marked with, what is she thinking here? What is she feeling here? 

And, and I think to understanding the, the key components of how character has agency in the story that probably was the true aha moment for me. And how to bring that agency to bear, I took a a workshop, a couple of workshops with Donald Maass. I don't know if you know his name, but, oh He is. He's one of the best. And if not, the best teacher. Ever. And we were doing a little workshop, and this was when I was writing The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle, and he asked us to take a scene.  And and he gave us some instructions as he does.

It's he's so clever, gives us instructions about the scene. We think we're in the scene. We think we're in the scene. And then he suddenly says, Oh, and by the way, now I want you to have the character do exactly the opposite thing that you think they should do.  Boom.  And I sat, I chose the scene and I chose the scene right off the bat as my, my climax scene, when my character's facing the antagonist of crisis climax, when she's facing the antagonist and she's, fascinated with clocks and the antagonist is  a kind of a steampunk character who's been remade because she's given away  parts of her body as, as a, as a way to get power.

So it's, she's,  she's partly mechanical, and my character's about to kind of nail her,  you know, get her. And and she suddenly looks at her and says, Oh my God, she's beautiful.  I want to be like her.  Doing the opposite of what you think the character is supposed to do in that moment, it was such a wake-up call for me.

It was like,  that is what it means to have a complex, nuanced character.  The character is driven by desires that conflict inside them. And their agency has to be driven by those same internal conflicts. So they're not always making the right choices. They could make a terrible choice. I call this the Luke Skywalker moment because I, you see it in, in the third film of the first three films where he's given the choice, you know, your friends are all going to die.

So you have a choice. You can become like me, the emperor, or be a good guy and watch everybody you love die. And, and he's wrestling with that choice, except that then he realizes, no, there's, there is a middle way here, there is another way to take this, and I don't have to, I don't have to be bad but I can't save my friends if I, if I am bad, and I'm, and maybe I can't save them if I stay good, but I'm gonna have to try.

So,  these are, these are the critical choices that the character makes, which as a writer you have to understand. How to force the character to make those choices in the, in a crippling moment, in a difficult moment.  So that I think is what I understand agency means now. It's not just, you know, taking the story to the next thing.

Stacy

It's taking the character to the next aha moment of, you know, living as a human being. Right. 

Janet So, yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah,  precisely.  

Stacy So when you look back on your own writing life, what did self-doubt, because we all struggle with it, what did self-doubt look like for you in your early writing life, and how did you move through it, and what does it look like now, and how do you handle it? 

Janet

That's a great question. I love that question.  Well, like every wannabe writer, it took me years to get published. It took a lot of struggle and, oh, I'm never going to make it. I'm never going to get there. And pushing through that, I think just,  just doggedly persistent.  And I try to tell writers this: if you really want to do this, you're going to have to be persistent.Because it is not easy. And especially today. It's really hard right now to get published. So I feel for writers who are trying to put their work out there. It's just, it's a tough time since COVID. I don't know what happened to shake things up, but it has, it feels like it's a shaky time. So, for me it was, gosh, how am I ever going to do this?

And I just, I just, Little by little, learned the craft,  did more and more work on my own craft, and and then found my way through by writing some things for magazines I wrote a nonfiction book, actually my first book is the little nonfiction book that I sold myself to, to Free Spirit Publishing, and it's still in print with print.

Tens of thousands of copies.  So,  so that got me over the, I'll never be published.  And then it was a matter of still pursuing the craft and trying to figure out how to tell a story, a good story. And that's, that's just hard work now. I would say.  You know, I'm, I'm more confident. I still have books coming out.

I have that book coming out next fall, The Mystery of Mystic Mountain, which is a super fun middle-grade puzzles and riddles, and I'm calling it Indiana Jones meets the Hardy Boys meets Holes.  It's, it's really, so, so much fun to write. And I have another book coming out in 2025, which is a nonfiction book about Rosalind Franklin.

And I'm working on a picture book that I hope will sell, and I'm working on a couple of new adult and, and adult books. So I just do it when I find an idea.  I just don't want to let it go. And if, if the idea sticks with me, then I'm, then I'm gonna, I'm gonna see it to the end, even if the book doesn't get published.

So I think it's just being really, really stubborn and not listening to my inner critic. You know, I've learned to tell my inner critic to take a vacation. 

Stacy 

 I love that. You know, the thing I really anchored into that you said is I focused on my craft and writing, learning to write a good book because out of everything, that, you can't control.

You can control how much effort you bring to the table  to learn your craft. 

Janet

Exactly. Right.  Exactly. 

Stacy 

Right. You may need to go find them. You need to go find the mentors. The, people that can help you learn, but no one can control that effort but you. So if you focus on the craft and on improving and learning, I think that helps you stay in it.It helps me stay in it.  

Janet

Yeah, that's exactly right. So well said. So well said. How can I get, how can I figure this out? Make this a little better. Tweak this a little bit more. Yeah. 

Stacy

So you're a very busy person. You write, you help writers. How do you find the time to write for yourself personally?

Janet

I still try to set aside writing time. Right now I'm trying to build this the courses that I'm building. And I'm seeing my way through that in the next month, and I think then I'll be able to get, I have the picture book that's ready to go out, but I have this other book that's,  I've started, I've got 25, 000 words in.

So, I just prioritize it when I feel like that, okay, I've got to get back to this story, this story is haunting me, I can't stop thinking about it. I mean, I tell people to try and write every day, but I don't have time to write every day now. I'm, I'm very busy. And, and I just see this as a time where, all right, I'm going to, I'm building what I think of as a legacy project.

You know, I feel like I know a lot. I can teach a lot. I would like to teach. So I'm creating these courses as a way to put what I understand about writing out there in the hopes that someone else will pick it up and go, Oh, that's just what I needed in this moment to understand this thing about writing that character. And you know, that makes me happy. So, you know, it's either writing a book or, or putting up courses and right now it's putting up courses. 

Stacy 

So, prioritization,  and then I love how you're framing. I mean, it's, you're paying it forward.  

What's the best piece of writing advice you think you've ever come across in the last 25 years,  

Janet

Wow it's a tough question. I know. Oh, actually, I, have it right on the tip of my tongue. So, one of my first mentors, in fact, my truest mentor, is Kathy Appel.

I, we lived in the same town in Texas. And when I first started writing for kids, a friend of mine said, Oh, you need to meet Kathy. She's great. She'll tell you all about writing. I cold-called her. I mean, I've never done this before. I cold-called her. Well,she's an incredibly generous and loving person. 

And she gave me so much advice.  One piece of advice was to go to my MFA program, Vermont College, where she was teaching at the time, and that was an excellent piece of advice and, and all, and all the way through. I mean, just one, one thing after another, but she said, she wrote the, the Newbery honor winning the underneath, and she said when she wrote that,  She was struggling with this very complicated story.

And it was about when I struggled with my very complicated Charmed Childrend of Rookskill Castle And she said that Tobin Anderson, who was another teacher at Vermont college, had turned to her and said, write what you think you can't.  And I took that to heart.  So she passed it on to me. She said, she's, she wrote it on a sticky note, put it on her, on her computer. 

I did the same thing. 

What you think you can't,  which to me translates as always  push yourself to do something more with that piece of writing. Don't sit back and say, Oh, it's fine. Fine. It's going to be fine.  It's it's good enough. Cause it isn't. If you haven't felt like,  take a deep breath because this is, this is exciting and scary and, and yet it's also wonderful. 

Yeah,  

I could take that to mean two ways, like challenging yourself to,  you know, to, to go another, another level into your craft, another try something you haven't done before, but also.  To do things like unlock antagonists who we are protecting because their wounds are so similar to ours, you know, right?

Stacy

Write what you think you can't. I love that. Thank you, Janet.

So, what wish would you like to impart to your fellow middle-grade writers?  

Janet

Just keep going because there's always room on the bookshelf for another great book. Book and your book is, is right there with all the others.And don't ever think that you're in competition because you're not, and it's not a competition. It's not a race. Just write the best book you can and do your best to get it out there one way or another. And don't be disheartened. It's a tough time, but it's all doable. It's all doable. If you keep going. 

Stacy

Focus on the things that you can control, like the joy that the story can bring you. Yeah. So what are you currently working on? I know you mentioned you have several books in the works, but as a writing coach and a mentor, what are you currently working on that you'd like to share with our listeners?

Janet

Well, I am working on this. It's a YA to upper YA retelling of Beauty and the Beast from a different perspective, so I'm having fun with that. I've also been working on an adult novel idea that is super fun and a little quirky. I have this picture book I will send to my agent.

And my courses and there are always ideas simmering in the back of my head.  Yes, the courses are, are, I, I have a program called Fox’s DEN, which is the Mentorship Membership Program, which is a big course. It's a, it's a group we, we meet twice a month in Zoom people can send me questions, we have a community room where they can ask questions and talk to each other there's, About 50 hours of content available to them, plus bonuses so they seem to be really excited about it, the students that I have in there now, I'd love some more students, so if you're a student out there looking for a place to hang your hat in any of the middle grades, or any of the children's lit spaces, from picture book right through YA you'd be most welcome.

Stacy

Where is the best place for listeners to connect with you?  

Janet, 

My website is probably the best place. janetfox.com

I also have an author page at Author Janet Fox. I'm on Instagram a lot at Janet S. Fox and I have a Pinterest page, and that's.  Well, no, actually, my number one tool right now is Substack. I have a Substack blog, and I would say 90 to 95 percent of my posts are on craft. So I take some aspect of the craft and try to, you know, narrow it way down, but also keep it pretty, pretty on the Upper end of learning. So if somebody's beginning, they'll get the information, but if they're more advanced, they'll still be able to take it to the next step. I love writing those posts. I do it weekly. So find me on Substack. Again, it's, I think, I call it Foxtails. If you look up Foxtails on Substack, you'll find me or Janet Fox, either one.

Stacy 

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today, Janet, and for talking about the middle-grade category and your experience with it. You're just a delight. Thank you for your generosity. Spirit, and I wish you all the best with the book that's coming out in October, The Mystery of Mystic Mountain.