Birthdays: Carolyn Meyer (1935), Judy Sierra (1945), Sara Paretsky (1947)

Tip: Don’t quit your day job! Sad to say, very few novelists make a living at writing. For every Stephen King, there are a thousand others who barely make a few dollars each quarter. Most writers have jobs outside their writing lives. And many of them love those jobs so they’re not unhappy spending that time not writing. They manage to fit the writing in around the day jobs.

Thought for the day: “It takes a lot of cappuccino to get me through a book.” – Sara Paretsky

Jumpstart: Finish this scene: I followed the old map I found in my grandfather’s trunk and discovered… (use: spider web, crystal ball, old computer disk)

Sara Paretsky is an American author who has written 17 novels as well as short stories and non-fiction books. She is best known for creating V.I. Warshawski, a female private investigator. The series began in 1991 with Indemnity Only. Paretsky was named 2011 Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

Carolyn Meyer is an American author of novels for children and young adults. The typical genre for her work is historical fiction, one of her more popular projects being the Young Royals series, each novel of which tells the story of a different female royal and crown princess of her home country—either Egypt, England, Italy, Scotland, Austria and France.

Judy Sierra is the author of many award-winning books for children including the bestsellers Antarctic Antics, illustrated by Jose Aruego and Ariane Dewey; Wild About Books, illustrated by Marc Brown; and The Secret Science Project that Almost Ate the School, illustrated by Stephen Gammell.