In a writing career spanning over forty years and thirty-eight books to date, I have had the privilege of working with a number of brilliant editors. I was able to begin putting the lessons I learned from them to use when I became the children’s book editor for Red Deer Press, back in the early nineties, acquiring and working on scores of young adult novels and children’s novels, as well as picture books. I went on to teach for eighteen years at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in their master’s degree program: Writing for Children and Young Adults. In that hothouse of creativity, I had the opportunity to work with distinguished colleagues and with hundreds of extraordinary students, many of whom have gone on to successful writing careers. I have also worked for just as many years as a mentor in the Humber School for Writers, working with a range of students from enthusiastic newbies to writers with a manuscript only a draft away from submitting to agents and publishers. I understand the exhilaration and frustrations of the writing process, personally and viscerally.