School Visits
Hi! My name is
Melanie Dale.
I’m the author of five books, a yoga teacher, and the mother of three kids. Thanks so much for your interest in bringing an author to your school!
Over the course of my career I’ve published several nonfiction books with HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster, and now I’m thrilled to share my first middle grade fiction book with students. GIRL OF LORE is published by Simon & Schuster, and I love sharing what I’ve learned about writing and publishing with upper elementary and middle schoolers.
What to Expect
30-MINUTE PRESENTATION
For the first 30 minutes, we’ll talk about writing, creating, and revising a novel, including:
- My journey to becoming an author
- My writing process
- Getting your book out of your head and onto the page
- How to “write what you know”
- World-building and forming fantasy from the world around you
- Creating characters and dialogue
- Editing the book to make it better
15-MINUTE Q&A
We’ll wrap up with 15 minutes of Q&A, and I’ll give readers and budding authors a chance to ask all their questions.
BOOK SIGNING
Students will also have the opportunity to purchase a signed copy of GIRL OF LORE and read the finished product after learning all about what went in to making it.
Get in Touch
I’m happy to work with schools to tailor an experience to fit their needs. I live in the Atlanta area. If bringing me to your school isn’t feasible, I have a virtual visit option as well. Contact me at melanie@melaniedale.com and let’s see what we can dream up together!
About the Book
Stories of dark magic and even darker creatures have always swirled about Mina Murray’s town of London, Georgia.
Mina knows they aren’t true—and are likely perpetuated only to drive the quirky tourist-trap ghost tours of downtown—but that doesn’t stop her from collecting the stories and drawing them in her sketchbook. Something about the possibility of real monsters helps her deal with the monster in her own head: her OCD, which convinces her danger lurks everywhere.
But when a body is found drained of blood and a classmate goes missing, Mina is thrust into a tangled web of London secrets…and she seems to be at the center.
About Melanie Dale
Before embracing her love of monsters and sneaking into Mina’s fictional world, Melanie Dale published a bunch of nonfiction books, shambled around as a zombie on TV, and survived cancer. She’s written episodes for the anthology horror television series Creepshow and over a decade of essays for Coffee + Crumbs. While she has won no awards for literature, she won a Halloween costume contest one time and still feels pretty stoked about it. When she’s not writing, she’s teaching yoga or battling her own brain. She lives in the Atlanta area.
