I’ve been hard at work on Remnants again lately for Camp Nano. I have a small word count goal – just 5,000 words, give or take – and I have no idea how close I am to hitting it. But I inadvertantly skipped over a major portion of the story during a writing spree a few months ago, and now I have to go back and fix it, so if I can at least get that accomplished, then I’ll consider camp a success.
Meanwhile, here’s a little taste of what all that fixing has wrought…
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?
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.
(c) 2013. All rights reserved.
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…
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.
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!
(c) 2013. All rights reserved.
Having a good idea is only half the battle. Executing that idea into a book takes time, patience, and plenty of caffeine. -Brian Klems
(c) 2013. All rights reserved.
Yep, that’s right, I’ve been working on my pitch for The Lokana Chronicles again. Though (as far as I’m aware, having not checked Twitter in the last couple of hours) the Query Kombat picks haven’t yet been announced, I’m not holding my breath that I’ll get in They’ve announced the picks for Query Kombat and I didn’t get in, but I’m not surprised because what I submitted for a query was, well, not very good. Even I knew it, but I crossed my fingers and hit submit anyway. Huge congrats to everyone who made it in, though – out of something like 210 kontestants, only 64 made it through to the next round and I think 32 are being eliminated in the first cut. Pretty brutal, but pretty awesome, too. Good luck to everybody who made it in!
Anyway, as I was trolling Twitter the other day (and by trolling, I mean more like scrolling through my feeds, not being a troll), I happened across this from the lovely Stacey Trombley:
Hey #QueryKombat tweeps. I’m writing today but I’m in the mood to make friends. Anyone want me to read their queries? #QueryKombatSlush
— Stacey Trombley (@Trombolii) May 21, 2013
He crossed the room slowly as the unseen hand of his tutor banged on the door again. The knocking had a tone and texture all its own, not unlike a voice. It was at once demanding, frustrated, and annoyed, as if the person knocking would much rather be somewhere, anywhere, else. Michael had never noticed such a thing in a knock before; he wondered what else he’d missed as he had sailed through life trying to engage fully with a half dozen different things all at once.
-The Lokana Chronicles: Fog of War
I’ve been working on my story again. It’s been a while, though, and I’ve lost touch with what I’d written before, so I’m rereading it and creating a synopsis so that I have something to look back at any time I need a bit of a refresher. The quote above is from Chapter 7.
Hiya! I know it’s been a few days, but after all those haiku I posted last month, I needed a bit of a break. Also, I’ve been fighting off a migraine for the last few days, so my time doing much of anything productive has been pretty limited. But now I’m back, more exhausted than ever, and ready to…uh…well, maybe not wow you, exactly, but hopefully keep you entertained with my stunning ability to trip over flat surfaces.
That should do nicely, yes?
No? What do you mean, no?
What do you mean, you want substance? Why on Earth are you here, then? Wait! Don’t leave me!
Okay, that was a little pathetic. Well, if it’s substance you want instead of slapstick, how about this? I was nominated for the Liebster Award earlier today by the lovely G. Edward Smith. He’s got a very nice blog and it’s well worth checking out.
As usual, we’ve got some rules for this puppy. They be as follows (and you know you want to follow, right? Right!):
Suddenly they all died. The end. 