About

“The paradise for readers and writers both young and old to discuss the beauty of the amazing genre of action/adventure. We give you writing tips, book reviews, and free critiques.”

–Daniel Johnston, The Readers and Writers Paradise

Hello, my name is Daniel Johnston, and I am the creator and owner of The Readers and Writers Paradise. I am a thirteen year old “whiz kid” and my currently specialize in chess (I am one of the top players for my age), stock broking (the Motley Fools have been a huge help), blogging, and (of course) reading and writing in the genre of action/adventure.

Listen to what The Readers and Writers Paradise is about in audio format!

While I have not published any books as of yet, there are a few which I am working on, and am pretty close to finishing one of them. As soon as I cut a book deal, I will add the information of the book to my website. In the past, I put some of the information of my plans for books on the web and had the ideas stolen, so I’m making sure that doesn’t happen again.

I have always loved reading, and enjoyed writing quite a bit, but hadn’t really become serious about becoming a writer.

Two years ago (in 2008) when I read the book Swindle by Gordon Korman, my life was changed. I was hooked on him and writing like him. Immediately, I started crafting ideas (the very ones which were ripped off) and people seemed to love them (especially my “personal editor”, Aunt Jackie).

As frustrating as having my ideas stolen was, the positive feedback that I got encouraged me to write more, even though my time had been “wasted.”

My writing life has changed greatly since that time. I have learned how to both plan and write a book, and my writing style has evolved. I was very surprised when I was the only one in the country to get a perfect score on the ELA State Test when I thought that I hadn’t even done well!

This persuaded me to start giving writing tips. I hung out at some local places and gave aspiring young writers like me advice. I never thought about actually publishing this information.

Then, just a few months ago, in November 2009, another event happened that changed my life. I was on Henrik Edberg’s excellent Positivity Blog, and I noticed that he linked to ProBlogger. Because of Henrik’s raves, I decided to check it out.

Although I had blogs before and even some pretty popular websites, I had never really known that one could make money or blog in the way that I do know. In fact, I re-wrote this about page because of this old post I found on ProBlogger.

So I started a blog on technology. That went pretty well for the time that it was up (only a few weeks), but I discovered that once I started experimenting with writing on this topic, I liked writing for this blog a lot more. Therefore, I closed that one and have poured all my time into this one.  My goal is to help all of you become professional action/adventure writers and read the right action/adventure books (while making a little money, of course). I plan on doing this by making regular posts and fairly regular videos. A few times I have had some big events happen and have been absent from this site. I apologize if this happens, but in general, I really shouldn’t be gone at all for more than a week or two. Feel free to give your feedback on my articles through the comments section and my contact me page.

Here are some pages so far that you should visit before all the others:

Writing Is Hard Work Series: Introduction

Writing Is Hard Work Series: Part One: Why do People Think Things will be Easy? Part One

Writing Is Hard Work Series: Part One: Why do People Think Things will be Easy? Part Two

Writing Is Hard Work Series: Part One: Why do People Think Things will be Easy? Video

Writing Is Hard Work Series: Part Two: Research: Introduction

Of course, make sure to visit The Archives, to make sure you haven’t missed anything, subscribe to my feed to get my latest posts delivered to your reader, or (if you don’t have a reader) just wait a week or two, and my e-mail newsletter will be ready! Also, follow me on Twitter @techhelp101.