About Us

Angela Ackerman:

Angela is a thirty-something writer living in Calgary, Alberta, which is nestled close enough to the Rockies to go on a day jaunt, but not so close as to be pummeled by snow and excruciating cold temperatures in the winter months. Despite being Canadian, she lives in a house, not an igloo, she refuses to wear toques and she generally travels by truck, rather than moose or ATVs or beavers or whatever other things the outside world suspects.

Angela's husband and two kids are beyond awesome. The former rarely complains about the hoarder-like piles of books and paper surrounding her desk, regardless of being a self-professed neat freak. Her kids, both teen boys, have inherited Angela's interest in All Things Strange, and are great to bounce off apocalypse theories and freaky 'what-if' scenarios that are common in Angela's books.

Angela often writes about mythology in the real world, but twists everything so that it's much darker and interesting. Bad things happen, but her teen and pre-teen characters always rise to the challenge in impossible situations. This is no surprise, because kids have internal strength that represents the best qualities in all of us. They struggle, adapt and survive. This is why she writes for this amazing YA & MG audience.

Another passion of Angela's is helping writers succeed.  She enjoys working with writers on strengthening their craft and helping them find the tools and resources they need to take their writing to the next level. She teaches workshops on writing and social media, belong to SCBWI and is a strong believer in paying it forward. Along with Becca Puglisi, she is the author of popular brainstorming tool, The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writers Guide To Character Expression.


Angela's agent is the ever-tenacious Jill Corcoran of The Herman Agency. Angela's mentor & comrade-in-arms is the incredibly talented Becca Puglisi, whose bio follows.

CONTACT ANGELA


Becca Puglisi:

Becca is a YA writer who lives in south Florida and, ironically, hates the weather. During hurricane season, you can find her cursing the heat, stalking Jim Cantore, and adding to her stash of emergency supplies.

When not writing, Becca's life revolves around her husband and two adorable little blessings. Al is wonderfully supportive of his wife's not-exactly-lucrative writing career. He is also a comfortable kind of husband who doesn't complain when the kids get nutritious leftovers while he has to scrounge some kind of meal out of stale Cheerios, yogurt, and Velveeta. Becca's toddlers, a girl and a boy, keep her intimately acquainted with the children's section of the library, the park, and any Chick-fil-A with a playground. She has given up wearing lipstick because she can't stop kissing her kids.

During her free time (ha), Becca can be found reading, popping open a fresh Mountain Dew, eating low-fat/high-nutrient foods like Twizzlers and Lucky Charms, watching movies, and obsessively calling GameStop to make sure the release of Diablo III hasn't been pushed back AGAIN.

With a bio like this, it is frankly unbelievable that Becca is still agent-less. While her hero, Angela Ackerman, is inspiring and motivating and fabulously encouraging, she's as yet been unable to land Becca a publishing deal. So Becca is still looking for Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. or Miss Right. She writes YA fantasy and historical fiction--some sweet, some dark. Any agents interested in filling the gaping void in Becca's writing soul can buy her indentured servitude with a standard contract and a 12-pack of Dew.

CONTACT BECCA

And, if you're interested, here's an amusing story about how Becca and I first met in person...literally.

First off, I live in Alberta, Canada, while Becca lives in Florida, USA. As you can imagine, our friendship had been almost 100% online.

In 2007, team Ackerman decided to take the family to Orlando for a week in Disney World. As fate would have it, Becca lives 2 hours from Orlando and so agreed to pop up for a visit. We decided to spend the day in Magic Kingdom.

Talk about EPIC.

Well, let me tell you, I was pretty jazzed about meeting her for reals. I'd seen a pic of her and she looked fairly normal. You know, she had hair and there was no extra head growing out of her armpit or anything. She told me she'd wear a red shirt and I said I'd wear a teal one. We'd meet near the castle at x o'clock. Easy peasy, right?

Of course, as my family packed ourselves into the minivan for the drive to Disney, I started thinking about how frigging huge Cinderella's castle was. And how I looked at Becca's picture for all of 9 seconds--could I really be sure she didn't have a head growing out of her armpit? I mean, maybe I missed it. That time of year, 30K worth of visitors hit the gates every day.

Then, to add to the fun times, I realized I'd forgotten her cell # at the hotel. Smart, Angela...smart.

As we deliberated on which way to reach Magic Kingdom (you can take 1 of 3 double-decker ferries, or take the rail tube system, I'll admit, I WAS STARTING TO PANIC. I envisioned a day of us waiting in different parts of the castle, missing each other completely. So, I grabbed a flyer from an info booth and started to write Becca's name in BIG, BLOCKY LETTERS so I could hold it up all dork-like. Maybe it would help. Maybe.

We chose a ferry as our mode of travel, along with about 300 other people. My family and I were herded to the front (did I mention I had my inlaws along?) and I was all smiles, trying to not hyperventilate over this disaster about to unfold. Crying kids at having to wait at a castle instead of exploring MK. Disapproving inlaws at my poor planning skills. Becca, frustrated, coming all this way and thinking I was a no show.

Then it happened.

I looked over at the other side of the ferry and perched at the end of a bench was a familiar-looking woman. She had a red shirt, hair, and no extra appendage growing out of her armpit. Becca.

Yep, 30K of park visitors, 4 different choices for getting to Magic Kingdom...and Becca and I ended up 6 feet from one another, on the same freaking ferry. If that isn't Fate, I don't know what is.