Are your students excited about writing? Do you want them to be? Do you want them to ask for more writing opportunities and assignments? Do you want them to engage in writing tasks more quickly and with more fluency? The traditional five-step writing process never explicitly teaches students to be fluent in their writing—to be able to write quickly on any topic. Extreme Writing targets precisely that with focused, daily writing sessions that provide students with consistent, long-term engagement. It is designed to appeal to students in grades 4–8, and—best of all—the approach involves little extra work for you. In The Power of Extreme Writing, author Diana Cruchley not only outlines the process but also describes what it looks like in the classroom, explains how to assess student work, and highlights more than a dozen unique inspirations that motivate students to write. Extreme Writing: it's fun, it's fast, and it works.

In recent years, educators have become increasingly concerned about the writing skills of students in elementary, middle, and high school. They wonder what can be done to build proper writing skills, particularly in a generation of students who may consider text messaging to be the only writing a person needs to do. Extreme Writing describes how teachers can build upon the eagerness and skills that students apply to recreational, social, and friendly writing, bringing enjoyment back into writing for students. The Extreme Writing approach is not a precise formula for student achievement; rather, it is a shared discovery of the process, the adventure, the wonder, and the liberation inherent in writing.

The bestselling Emotion Thesaurus, often hailed as “the gold standard for writers” and credited with transforming how writers craft emotion, has now been expanded to include 56 new entries! One of the biggest struggles for writers is how to convey emotion to readers in a unique and compelling way. When showing our characters’ feelings, we often use the first idea that comes to mind, and they end up smiling, nodding, and frowning too much. If you need inspiration for creating characters’ emotional responses that are personalized and evocative, this ultimate show-don’t-tell guide for emotion can help. It includes: • Body language cues, thoughts, and visceral responses for over 130 emotions that cover a range of intensity from mild to severe, providing innumerable options for individualizing a character’s reactions • A breakdown of the biggest emotion-related writing problems and how to overcome them • Advice on what should be done before drafting to make sure your characters’ emotions will be realistic and consistent • Instruction for how to show hidden feelings and emotional subtext through dialogue and nonverbal cues • And much more! The Emotion Thesaurus, in its easy-to-navigate list format, will inspire you to create stronger, fresher character expressions and engage readers from your first page to your last.

Bay Winchester is having a tough week. As the local editor of Hemlock Cove's only newspaper, she just happens to be present when a body is found in an area corn maze. To make matters worse, the police believe the murder may have something to do with the occult. This wouldn't be a problem for a normal reporter, but since Bay is descended from a well-known line of actual witches, the town is understandably on edge. Between the suspicious townspeople, the befuddled police presence, and that random hot biker guy who may or may not have something to do with the murder -- Bay has her hands full. When you add the typical family problems, multiplying ghosts -- and one monster of a zit that she's sure came from her aunt's curse -- Bay is just struggling to make it through the week. Of course, when the killer sets his sights on Bay, things could get a whole lot worse.

What impact has deconstruction had on the way we read American culture? And how is American culture itself peculiarly deconstructive? To address these questions, this volume brings together some of the most provocative thinkers associated with deconstruction, among them Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, and Avital Ronnel. Ranging across a wide field, from the ethics of reading to the rhetoric of performance, the contributors offer provocative insights into a new sense of the political. The America of the volume's title turns out to be the place where the politics and poetics of responsibility meet. It is also the place where we confront the tension between difference and profound otherness.

In elegant, sensual prose, Michael Crummey crafts a haunting tale set in Newfoundland at the turn of the 19th century. A richly imagined story about love, loss and the heartbreaking compromises—both personal and political—that undermine lives, River Thieves is a masterful debut novel. Published in Canada and the United States, it joins a wave of classic literature from eastern Canada, including the works of Alistair MacLeod, Wayne Johnston and David Adams Richards, while resonating at times with the spirit of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain and Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy. An enthralling story of passion and suspense, River Thieves captures both the vast sweep of history and the intimate lives of a deeply emotional and complex cast of characters caught in its wake.

Write faster...write more!Master Lists for Writers makes "show, don't tell" a lot easier and helps you figure out your story more quickly. In this book, you'll find: - lists of phrases for describing facial expressions, body language, gestures, physical appearance, and emotions- 175 master plot ideas, including romance, high-stakes, family, and workplace stories- lists of words for writing action scenes and love scenes - inspiration for figuring out character traits and quirks, backstories, occupations, motivations, and goals- lists for describing settings and writing dialogue- lists of good character names for contemporary stories...plus medieval England, Regency England, Wild West, and WWII settings- and more!Whether you're writing novels or short fiction, screenwriting, or any other kind of storytelling, Master Lists for Writers is a rich source of inspiration you'll turn to again and again.This book contains adult language.

Berger’s slim, user-friendly volume on academic writing is a gift to linguistically-stressed academics. Author of 60 published books, the author speaks to junior scholars and graduate students about the process and products of academic writing. He differentiates between business writing skills for memos, proposals, and reports, and the scholarly writing that occurs in journals and books. He has suggestions for getting the “turgid” out of turgid academic prose and offers suggestions on how to best structure various forms of documents for effective communication. Written in Berger’s friendly, personal style, he shows by example that academics can write good, readable prose in a variety of genres.

SOME STAINS DON'T COME OUT... Raised in a household so filthy it was stomach-spilling, Vera involuntarily evolved into a neat freak. Upon discovering she and her disabled husband Daniel are expecting, she needs fast cash. Her obsession with cleanliness sprouts the concept that her skills can be put to use in a unique way. She takes a stab at the booming door-to-door vacuum sales business of 1988. All is going well until she arrives at the steps of a house that will change her forever. The steps of an evil that resurrects the ghastly memories she so desperately tried to wash away. Nothing will prepare you for the nastiness, disorder and sickening horror brought forth by... The Slob.

Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle's audacious and gripping debut novel Wolf in White Van is a marvel of storytelling and genuine literary delicacy. Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move. Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. His primary creation, Trace Italian, is an intricate text-role playing game that enables participants far and wide to explore a dystopian America, seeking refuge amidst the ruin. However, when two high school players, Lance and Carrie, extend the game into their reality, the consequences are horrifying, leaving Sean to account for it. Darnielle’s Wolf in White Van invites us to comprehend the depth and intricacy of Sean's life. Told in reverse, the story draws us back to the moment that fundamentally altered Sean’s life as he knows it.