M.L. Little, Author

It's my day for the 12 Days of Christmas blog tour and I'm giving away a signed paperback copy of my book and a custom bookmark by Aedan Peterson. One lucky person will win! Want to be the winner? Head over to my Instagram  and follow the easy steps to enter!

The Twelve Days of Christmas Blog Tour  Every day for twelve days, an author will host a giveaway or sale. I'm excited to be part of the lineup!  Day One: Yaasha Moriah  Head over to Yaasha's blog  and enter to win a copy of her YA novel Without a Vision! It ends tonight so hurry!

I'm typing this on Saturday evening and not even trying to pretend otherwise. Today I'd like to introduce Verity Buchanan, an author as well as an unofficial composer who once infiltrated my house for eight days. Author Interview: Verity Buchanan What are some of the very first books you remember having read to you? This is hard because I was always being read to. I do remember listening to the last chapter of Charlotte’s Web at a very early age (and trying to push back tears, which is hard when your mom is getting emotional too). After that, the earliest definite memory I have of a read-aloud is The Hobbit, which I was so into even though I had already read it on my own. The version my mom and dad read to us had hundreds of illustrations from the 1980’s animated movie, and I would hang over the arm of the couch to see them. Chapters 6 and 8 were my favorites, because Gollum and spiders. Smaug was second-rate next to those spiders, boy. As you got older, what bo...

Yesterday was too busy, so in the spirit of better late than never, this week's Friday interview comes on Saturday evening. Today I'm excited to welcome Gillian McDunn to the blog. Gillian is the author of Caterpillar Summer (see my review here ) and has another novel releasing soon!  Author Interview: Gillian McDunn  For starters, thanks for talking to me. I’ll never forget your book because it was the first I ever reviewed for Kid Lit Exchange. Thanks so much for reading CATERPILLAR SUMMER and for having me here today! Your first novel released this year! Can you tell us a bit about your process of writing and publishing it? Writing for kids has been my dream my entire life, but for a long time I felt afraid to pursue it. Instead I had lots of different writing jobs—technical writing, public relations, grant writing etc. An idea started to grow about a girl, her younger brother, and a trip to coastal North Carolina. When I sat down to write, the dr...

Welcome back to Friday interviews! Today I'm excited to introduce my interview with Gail Shepherd. Gail is the author of The True History of Lyndie B. Hawkins, a 2019 Junior Library Guild Selection about a young girl whose veteran father is dealing with the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Friday Interview: Author Gail Shepherd  I love your book, The True History of Lyndie B. Hawkins. What inspired you to write it?  Lyndie actually started out as a very different kind of book. It was originally conceived as an adult book based on the childhood of a very close friend of mine, who grew up Filipino-American with a father who was a military man who’d been stationed in the Philippines and married a young woman there. Over time, as I revised, I moved the time period forward to 1985 to make it more relevant to my own experience, and made Lyndie a white Tennessee girl with a passion for history, which is also closer to my own life as a child of a southern family. What are...

Happy Friday! Today I'm sharing my conversation with Melissa Sarno, whose second novel. A Swirl of Ocean, released last week through Random House. Author Interview: Melissa Sarno  Hi! I'm happy to have you on the blog because I loved your book. A Swirl of Ocean. I'm yet to read your debut novel, Just Under the Clouds. Can you tell us about it?  Thank you so much for reading A Swirl of Ocean. Just Under the Clouds is about a twelve year old girl living in a homeless shelter in Brooklyn. When the shelter becomes unsafe, she and her mother and sister move in with an old friend and Cora discovers a tree, called Tree of Heaven, that her late father, who was a horticulturist, studied. It sets her on a path to try to understand the true meaning of home and where she and her family belong. Your website says you began writing at the age of seven. Do you remember some of the first stories you ever wrote?  Yes! As a reader, I was always drawn to realistic stories...

Happy Friday! Today I'm happy to share this space with Brittney Joy, who is not only an accomplished author but, if I do say so myself, an online friend of mine. During our conversation, I got to hear a preview of her next book as well as the funny way some of her characters got their names. Author Interview: Brittney Joy  Hi! Thanks for joining us today. Can you start by telling us when you wrote  your first story? Was it published or not?  In middle school I read a lot (mostly about horses) and I started journaling in high school—writing down all my thoughts, feelings, and experiences. The regular act of journaling taught me how to express myself and, ultimately, gave me the bug to write fiction. However, I didn’t start writing fiction until my late twenties and I was in my early thirties when I self-published my first young adult book, Lucy’s Chance . It took me some time to build up my confidence before I felt comfortable setting my story and words “free” ...