Tag: Writing

Yay Friday! :)

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Multitasking: I found the portal to Lokana while hiking at Pine Lake on a family vacation. Family time + research FTW! :)

Multitasking: I found the portal to Lokana while hiking at Pine Lake on a family vacation. Family time + research FTW! 🙂

So, it’s Friday.  Woohoo!  It’s been a week of big, exciting things around the country, and it’s been a week of big exciting things right here in my own backyard.  It’s going to be a super busy weekend, too.  So what am I doing to prepare?

I’M WRITING, Y’ALL!

I’ve been working on Remnants again the last couple of days, and it feels great, but I can’t get my inner editor to shut up, which is irritating.  I have a buttload of revisions left to do on The Lokana Chronicles, but I really need a week or so of peace, quiet, and no internet to get them done. 🙂

Still, it feels wonderful to be enjoying my passions again.  I’ve missed playing with my camera and visiting imaginary worlds and the people that populate them.  And since I’m starting a new job next week, it’s nice that at least a little bit of the change going on in my life is change that I enjoy (not that I’m not excited about the new job – I totally am).

So for now, it’s back to writing.  Big things are in the works and I need time to prepare.  Have a great weekend, everybody!

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

Catching up with Andrea Baker

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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!

CLD_0088

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

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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

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.

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To Mars!

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Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey

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

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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!

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

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WIP it! WIP it good!

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The wip it good blogfestSo 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…

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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! 🙂

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

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A solid battle plan

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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.

Pitch-tastic!

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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:

So I took her up on it! Read all about it behind the cut. Come on, you know you want to. Clicky clicky! 🙂

Progress!

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Yes, that’s right, I’m making progress!  My synopsis-writing project is almost at an end (meaning I hope to be finished with it by tomorrow or the next day) and if you follow me on Facebook, you’ll know that I started a new short story.  I plan to post it here when I’m finished.  I’m really excited about it – it’ll be my first foray into sci-fi, but it’s not hardcore.  At least, I don’t think it will be.

I was inspired by the news I heard over the weekend that a Dutch company plans to launch an expedition to colonize Mars within the next decade.  I started writing late last night and kept at it today.   As I was driving home tonight…