Hi! I'm Christine Brodien-Jones and I write fantasy/adventure books for young readers. I live in Gloucester, Massachusetts - the oldest seaport in the country - with my husband Peter in a tumbledown seaside house. I work in a corner of the living room by the window, with a view of the sea, on a huge Shaker desk littered with carved wooden owls. When the wind blows in from the north, my house creaks like an old ship. Gazing out over the salt marshes and boats, I can see sky and waves and shifting colors. It's easy to imagine distant places and mysterious other worlds.

I love writing for children because I remember my own excitement reading books when I was young: the nooks and crannies of my hometown library, the musty smell of old pages, and the sheer joy of escaping into a book. My hope is to fire the imaginations of young people so they can treasure and love the amazing power of stories.

THE OWL KEEPER was published in April 2010 by Random House/Delacorte Press and was released in paperback (Random House Yearling) in April 2011. My next book for Random House is THE SCORPIONS OF ZAHIR, a fantasy-adventure set in Morocco, and will be coming out in Summer 2012. I'm represented by Stephen Fraser of The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency.

Currently I'm working on my next book, THE GLASS PUZZLE, a middle-grade adventure set in Tenby, Wales.

"I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library." -- Jorge Luis Borges

Go to this page to see "The Owl Keeper" Book Trailer!

How I Lost My Editor & Found an Agent

"Be Careless, Reckless! Be a Lion! Be a Pirate! When You Write"
-Brenda Ueland

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Cynsations Guest Post:

christine brodien-jones on writing scary but not too scary for ‘tweens

"I leave you now at the bottom of your own stair, at half after midnight, with a pad, a pen, and a list to be made. Conjure the nouns, alert the secret self, taste the darkness. Your own Thing stands waiting 'way up there in the attic shadows. If you speak softly, and write any old word that wants to jump out of your nerves onto the page...
Your Thing at the top of your stairs in your own private night...may well come down."
-Ray Bradbury

The Pampas, Argentina - one of my favorite places!