Catching up with Andrea Baker

June 24, 201318 Comments

Today, I’m interviewing Andrea Baker, a fabulous friend whose book, Worlds Apart – Leah, is well worth checking out. So grab a nice cup of tea, get comfy, and settle in to learn more about this wonderful author!

AB: Hi, Kay, and thank you for inviting me onto your blog – I love the title of this blog; it always makes me smile.

KK: You’re most welcome! I’m always tickled when people tell me how much they like my blog’s title – titles are really hard for me, so it’s nice to know I picked a good one for my blog. So, tell us a little about yourself.

AB: I’m pretty ordinary really – daughter, sister, wife and mother to a gorgeous and cheeky little nine-year-old girl.

I work full-time as an Interim Manager. This means that I tend to have short term (usually at least 3 months) contracts with different clients, covering projects, service transformation and that sort of thing.

I’ve always loved the paranormal genre – I’ve always referred to my favourites as being the “edge of reality” stories, where they are based in the real world, but unreal happens. Because it is my favourite genre to both read and watch, it was natural for me to write it too.

KK: Write what you know, eh? Have you always written, or is it a recently discovered passion?

Keep reaching

June 20, 2013Leave a comment

When we’re little, we … dream big. We look up at the stars and we imagine that we only have to grow up in order to reach them. Most of the time, we grow up and never look at the stars again. –Cristian Mihai

Cassiopeia Star trails (Photo credit: weatherphotography.co.uk)

I read that quote earlier this evening. If you don’t follow Cristian’s blog, you should. He writes the most amazing posts. Anyway, as I was reading the post I linked to above, it got me thinking about all the ways in which I used to look up at the stars as a kid. I remember studying them in Girl Scouts and learning all the myths that went with the different constellations. It was fascinating stuff, but eventually, I, too, stopped looking up at the stars. My eyes had turned to the heavens of my own making instead.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to do great things. I’ve always wanted to be a famous author; I can’t remember a time when that was not what I wanted to do with my life. And I’m frustrated right now because as I’ve gotten older, other aspirations have crept in around the edges of my one burning desire, fighting for room to live and grown on their own, leaving less and less time for my passion. It’s not that I’m not passionate about the rest of my life – I am – it’s just that, right or wrong, I feel my time growing small. I feel I’ve not done what I was sent here to do. And I feel like I’m suddenly ill-equipped to pursue my most cherished lifelong dream.

All that said, I’m not giving up. They don’t make ’em much more stubborn than me (except for maybe my kids, but that’s another story :)). Recently I’ve been looking up at those same stars I used to gaze upon as a little girl and I’ve found my zest for this writing life renewed; the drive I thought was flagging has suddenly dropped into a whole new gear I’d never before been aware of. So here’s hoping that somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight, the right agent and publisher are ready and waiting to take The Lokana Chronicles and me under their wing. Mentor me! And help me whip my story into shape, no matter how much I might whine, please. 😀

Keep reaching for those stars, people, whatever your particular star might be.

Cristian Mihai (artandmindofcariann.wordpress.com)
A Quick Reminder That There Is So Much More Than Life On Earth (buzzfeed.com)
I have loved the stars too fondly…by Cristian Mihai (Reblogged) (shatteredandshining.wordpress.com)

Gone fishin’

June 13, 2013June 13, 201310 Comments

The boys are at the babysitter’s, the camper’s loaded up, and Camping Adventure Number One has begun! See you next week, everybody! 🙂

To Mars!

June 12, 2013June 12, 201330 Comments

Mars (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today’s post is brought to you by Thursday’s Children, a weekly blog hop about the things that inspire people to write. I meant to get a post up for last week’s hop, but that didn’t happen. Must…be…better…blogger…

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen my brain explode the other day. This happens on a fairly regular basis, but not always in a public forum. I was working away on my short story, the one that I’ve been trying to get posted for close to a month (I think – too lazy to go look), and it suddenly decided that it needed to become a full-fledged novel instead of a simple short story. Does this sound familiar to anyone out there? I think I might have had one slice too many of the Dark Lord’s cake…

I’ve got sunshine

June 11, 201315 Comments

It’s another beautiful day here in Central Iowa! We’re still dealing with some flooding, but at least the rain has stopped coming every darn day. Unfortunately, that happened a little too late for a lot of people, some of my family among them. I’ve been adding pictures to my Flood of 2013 Pinterest board – the water levels are just amazing. Even now that the constant rain has stopped, more or less, the rivers and creeks are still awfully high. A lot of fields still have standing water in them.

But that’s not what this post is about. My brain is currently being pulled in three different directions, so today’s post is going to be light and pretty. That’s right, it’s another photo post! After all, who doesn’t love pictures?

“What? Haven’t you ever seen a guy eat cake before?”

A little bit of sunshine on a cloudy day. 🙂

No, it’s not blood. Someone had fun with the ketchup while Mommy’s back was turned.

And Cricket’s frown got turned upside down…literally! 🙂

Gotta love silly father-daughter pictures. She makes the best faces. 🙂

I don’t know why my face is in focus and Thumper’s face isn’t, but it’s still super cute.

So that’s a brief look at what we’ve been up to lately – eating cake, playing in ketchup, and making faces (and writing like mad when I can find a few minutes of silence). This weekend we leave for our first camping trip of the season and I’m looking forward to family togetherness and more camera fun. And my Tomcat will be returning from two weeks with his dad, which will make it extra special. So if I’m even more absent than normal in the coming days, zat’s why, my lovelies. I promise to return with pictures a-plenty and perhaps even a fish tale or two!

Flooding could bring bumper crop of mosquitoes (siouxcityjournal.com)
Potential for wet weather in the next two weeks, residents urged to keep flood protection in place (coralvillecourier.typepad.com)
Twenty years after the Great Flood, we dread the next deluge (kansascity.com)
Wet weather not welcome in Iowa Great Lakes (siouxcityjournal.com)

WIP it! WIP it good!

June 7, 20135 Comments

So last Friday, I stumbled across a post about the WIP IT GOOD Blogfest. I found the original detail post here and thought it sounded interesting, so I decided to participate. There was just one tiny problem: My current pitch kinda sucked. Like, bad. So I thought, “Okay, no biggie, I’ll just fix it.”

Yeah, that turned out to be a bigger challenge than I had anticipated.

I finally finished the polishing this morning. It took me a week of scribbling and thinking and trying not to pull all the hair out of my head (bald isn’t a good look for me), but I finally finished the polishing. At least for now. Till someone tells me it could be better. Because really, in all honesty, it probably could be. I’m still not convinced about the transitions between paragraphs. And I’m only halfway through writing the darn thing, never mind revisions, so it could still go in a completely different direction. But this is the direction in which it’s currently heading, and I think it’s on track to stay that way. So. A plan. I kinda sorta maybe have one. Possibly.

Anyway, to the deets!

She winds up for the pitch…

June 5, 2013June 5, 20138 Comments

That’s right, I’m working on my pitch again. But this time it’s for my WIP. I stumbled across a WIP blog hop the other day and I want to participate, but first I need to shine up my pitch a bit. I’ve been polishing since Friday. But I think I’ve just about got it hammered out, so I’ll be posting regularly-ish again soon(ish)! I hope. 😀

All this is to say that I’ve been doing a fair bit of writing and even more thinking about writing of late. If I’ve been a bit absent, well, everywhere, now you know why. So in the meantime, please enjoy this pretty, pretty picture from The Great Gatsby:

Happy Hump Day! 🙂

WIP It Good Blogfest – My Current Project (joeowensblog.wordpress.com)
On novel pitching: an insight and an epiphany (ellenvgregory.com)
Inspired by sunshine (aletteratatime.wordpress.com)

Bedtime stories

May 30, 2013Leave a comment

I hope everyone’s staying dry tonight! As far as I can tell, the rain has finally stopped for a while, thank goodness. It was nice not to have to talk over the rain as I read Cricket and Thumper their bedtime story tonight.

I grew up watching Reading Rainbow. Anyone familiar with the show may remember that they read the title of the book, followed by the name of the author and the illustrator. I watched A LOT of Reading Rainbow as a kid and, as a result, when I read books aloud, I read them the same way: I start with the title, then the name of the author, and finally, the illustrator.

Seymour teases me about this particular quirk; clearly, he did not grow up watching Reading Rainbow. But I don’t really mind. I’m not going to change the way I read any time soon. But that’s not really the point of this little story (I can take a little good-natured teasing, after all – my grandpa was known among our family as “the big teaser,” after all). The point is that tonight, all my bedtime story efforts paid off in a surprising way: Cricket asked for a bedtime story by name.

One of the stories we’ve been reading at bedtime is A Sleepy Story by Elisabeth Burrowes. I’ve always loved Richard Brown’s illustrations for this story and when I ran across it one day as we were preparing to move our bookshelf, I pulled it off so that I could read it to the boys. It was one of my favorite stories when I was little and now they love it, too. Or at least Cricket does – Thumper doesn’t really seem to care what story we read, just as long as we read something. They do both love Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, though. Not that I blame them – who doesn’t love that book?

Anyway, I thought it was adorable that my two-year-old asked for a book by name and I had to share. At first I was just going to post this on Facebook, but then I kept typing and typing and then I decided that maybe I should just make a blog post out of it after all. 😀

So there you go. Cute kids, books, cute story. Happy Thursday, everybody!

Is the bedtime story in decline? (time4sleep.co.uk)

A solid battle plan

May 30, 20136 Comments

Having a good idea is only half the battle. Executing that idea into a book takes time, patience, and plenty of caffeine. -Brian Klems

Water, water, everywhere…

May 29, 20134 Comments

Photo courtesy of the Marshalltown Times-Republican

If you follow me anywhere else online, you’ll have seen by now the various flood pictures I’ve been sharing (seriously, much like the water, they’re all over – both my personal and public Facebook accounts, Flickr, Instagram, and soon Pinterest as well). Despite that, I’m going to post some more here anyway. The extent of the damage won’t likely be truly realized for a long time yet, and the recovery will probably take years if this turns out to be anything like previous floods have been.

I know I’ve mentioned the Flood of ’93 several times already, but we had another major flood just five years ago that I had forgotten about until a friend mentioned it on Facebook. I mean, I didn’t really forget, but I had forgotten that some of the severe flooding had been so close to us. All you seemed to hear about was what happened in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, but there was plenty of severe flooding in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls area, too, and I had forgotten that. I think the reason that ’93 is stuck in my head has to do with my mom; seeing all the photos she took of the local damage really imprinted the severity of the disaster on my tender little psyche. The flooding in 2008, while devastating, just didn’t have the same personal connection for me that the floods of ’93 and ’13 have.

Anyway, we drove through quite a bity of flooding again on Monday as we tried to get home.