Monique Polak

One of my favourite parts of being a children's writer is getting to meet other children's writers. This week, I "met" Kristin Butcher. I put the word "met" in quotationsbecause we didn't actually meet in person, but we did have a fun phone conversation.

Kristin lives in Campbell River, British Columbia. By fall, she will have published 15 books, including Return to Bone Tree Hill, a murder-mystery which came out in March. 

Kristin told me that her writing career began when she was teaching. "One year," she said, "I had a rough class. I tried to get them on side. I said, 'I'm going to write a book and put you all in it!'" And that is exactly what she did. That book, by the way, was called The Runaways. 

Because I knew you'd want to know, I asked Kristin to tell me a little about how she works. Kristin explained that she does most of her writing in the morning. And she tends to polish as she goes along. "I don't go lickety-split through a draft," she said. (You see, that's a fun thing about talking to writers, they say interesting things like "lickety-split"). Like me, Kristin has mixed feelings about using an outline: "I use an outline if the book is contracted before I write it. The outline is kind of like a security blanket."

Kristin will be in Quebec this November, touring for the Canadian Children's Book Center's Book Week... we're planning to meet in person then. And so I'll be able to tell you even more about Kristin and her books. In the mean time, let's hope for a long slow summer before then!