Karen Scribbles

Thanks for your Support ! ! !

2011-05-13T15:03:00.001-04:00

As some of you know, our house was destroyed by a fire on May 1st. We are safe, our boys are safe, we lost everything, but we have gained so much in the past few weeks.

Thanks so much for the outpouring of support. This kind of support has been carrying us through the last couple of weeks, and the reason we feel relief. We have learned so much about ourselves and our community since this happened. We have been able to remain positive because while we lost physical things, we've gained so many more emotional bonds to people in our community. So, we might have lost stuff, but we've gained so much more in terms of friendship and support.

Some of the random acts of kindness that people have done for us are amazing, like :

I called the pharmacist to renew my medicine, and she sent kids clothes to my house
We picked up some free kittens from another neighbor, and they gave us bags of food from their pantry
We went to our insurance company, and they had a birthday party for the boys complete with presents and balloons
The families at the kids school have all bought presents for both boys, and even did a toy drive for them
The kids school has sponsored us for the rest of the year for afterschool
Families everywhere have donated so many clothes to the boys that we have enough for them to wear for the rest of the school year without ever having to wear the same thing twice.
When we moved into the house our neighbors fixed up for us, it was stocked with groceries, bathroom stuff, cleaning stuff, laundry baskets, everything you would possibly need for a home.
The hotel we stayed in for the first two days gave us room service and access to the kitchen all day (even though room service wasnt something they normally provided)
The firemen, after putting out the fire, came back with clothes and toys for the boys

So many people have been so thoughtful to us, that I cannot possibly remember everything. It is hard to feel down when I have so much support around me. This might sound crazy to say, but I truly feel blessed to have so much support and feel like this happened for a reason.

Thanks for being out there!

ps, I will be going on a blog-hiatus for a few months while we rebuild our lives

peace out.

kfran

Chromatics Attack Review from my Target Market!

2011-04-25T10:11:00.017-04:00

Chromatics Attack
Reviewed by Madeline McElroy (age 9.5) for Reader Views (3/11)

When Emison's mom turns into a shadow and warns her about `The Chromatics' and then disappears, she must get back her mom before it's too late. About one week after her mom was gone, two new people move in next door in her apartment. Emison must be very careful to not saying anything or her mom might be more in danger then before! The next day Emison meets her new neighbors, a boy named Adam and a girl named Missy. They were very nice and fun. She wanted to tell them about her mom becoming a shadow, but she is afraid they can't keep a secret.

After a long day talking with her new friends, everyone goes back home. Emison wanted to find out more about the Chromatics her mom warned her about and looked them up in `Google.' Some results said Color Scientists and some said a paint store. She must find more. She searched shadow people but nothing came up. The next morning Emison shows her new friends around the building and they go to the thrift store to sell some stuff for her mom. When they get there, she asked the store keeper Mr. Lewis if he knew anything about the Chromatics. He said they sounded familiar and would look at it later. After they're done, they walk down the alley back to their apartment. In the lobby, Adam asks if they could go down to the basement and see what is there. Emison thought it might be fun so they went down. The basement had low light, very low light, and there was a big black hole in the middle of it, and a boy inside it. There was also a man talking to the boy; he said, "You can't come into our world, it's too dangerous." What did he mean?

The next day Emison, Adam, and Missy go down to the thrift store again. Emison asks Mr.Lewis if he found anything about the Chromatics, and he did. He found a flyer that read, Chromatics Meeting Today Down at Harper Street at 3:00. This could be a clue to finding her mom! They sneak down to Harper and look through the window of the meeting. Who would never know it, there was that big black hole again and Adam and Missy's babysitter Hannah! Then Emison realized her mom disappeared through a hole like that. Could it be the entrance to the shadow world! Tomorrow they plan to go back down to the basement and travel to the shadow world. When entering the shadow world, it was very dark and not a thing of life. The weird thing was that when Adam looked at the sun, it was not yellow, it was a glowing purple, and instead of burning your eyes, it was a beautiful sight. Emison knew she must stick to the case, to find her mom.

The rest of this book will leave you guessing what will happen, and what will not. "Chromatics Attack" is a great story that will keep you wanting to read more! I like this book because I love fantasy books; I think it's so awesome for this author to make up such a cool world and such a cool book! All kids my age and older would love reading this book. I know I loved it!

Thank you Madeline
KFran

Mind Mapping Heaven's Fishermen

2011-04-18T07:53:00.042-04:00

I use a tool called Freemind to create mind map diagrams about things in my book. I use it to help me with plot, character, setting, pace, all sorts of things. I thought it would be fun to share one I did for my work-in-progress called Heaven's Fishermen. The book is about a boy named Dax who thinks he is a guardian angel, and a girl named Janie whom he is supposed to rescue. Of course, Dax might really be a guardian angel, or he could be an escaped mental patient. I'm not quite sure yet. I've already written a 45k rough draft, and need to add about 20k more.

Here is a plot outline I did recently to help me work on some issues:

The tool has some great icons, like a lightbulb to symbolize an idea, and a red pencil to symbolize an idea that needs refining, and a key to symbolize something key to the plot. Here's a closeup of part of the map:

This section of the book needs lots of refining, but I have come up with several ideas that I am going to explore. Here is a shot of the list of icons Freemind has to offer, so you can see how useful this tool is.

Anyway, I'm off to go refine some of those ideas, or come up with some more. Actually I think I'm going to start another mind map on guardian angel fashion, because I think fashion is a very important part of any book--especially for young adults. I think one of the reasons Hunger Games was so successful was because of the glorious costumes they had to wear (argg, getting distracted--must focus!)

ttl
KFran

Publish with Amazon Publishing: Author Central Page Setup

2011-04-11T07:48:00.000-04:00

I recently setup my Amazon Author Page, and thought I'd blog about how easy it was to do so. I first thought it was a mystery, but after a few quick googles, I found this link to the Author Central enrollment page.

As usual, Amazon's instructions are straight forward, easy to follow. I love Amazon for this, they've made my life simple. To give you an idea, here are some screen shots of my process. The first thing you see when you click on the link, is the join now page. All you do here is click on the Join Now button.

Most of us already have an Amazon account, so we just join with our usual password and email. After that, you will receive a confirmation email and then you are taken to the main site, which looks something like this:

There are six tabs, including Home, Books, Profile, Sales Info, Customer Reviews, Help. You can setup your profile to add a picture, a bio, your blog posts, videos and events. All you have to do is click, add, click, add, click, add. Your books Sales Info, and Customer Review pages generate automatically. It's quite nice to see everything in one place.

This is how my biography turned out:

If you want to see my author page, click here. I thought there was a way to link the author page to the book in the Amazon store, if anyone knows how to do that, tell me! It might be a matter of syncing with the servers, so we'll see if it appears soon.

ttl

KFran

Saturn's Titan

2011-04-05T07:33:00.000-04:00

Saturn’s largest moon is called Titan. It's huge, larger than the planet Mercury. It has rivers, lakes, dunes and mountains. The rivers and lakes are not water, though. They're methane. The moon Titan has the same weather pattern as earth. It rains, the methane falling into rivers and lakes, and then the methane evaporates into the atmosphere—rinse and repeat.

According to Wikipedia, Methane, a natural gas, is at the highest levels on the planet earth in 400,000 years. It is a gas at normal temperature and pressure. Burning methane in the presence of oxygen produces carbon dioxide and water. It also has a high global warming potential. The earth's crust and core contains huge amounts of methane. Methanogenesis is the formation of methane by microbes. Methane gas is also produced when vegetation decomposes without air. Enough from Wikipedia.

A recent article in Scientific American (what else?) by R. Lorenz and C. Sotin had some other interesting things to say about Titan. The planet is covered by giant sand dunes made from hydrocarbon molecules resembling coffee grinds or coagulated smoke. The sand dunes, higher than any we have here, are punctured by icy hills. If this isn't interesting enough, Titan's seasons last years, only having come out of a 15 year dark winter last August. Far out.

A moon filled with coffee colored sand dunes, can you imagine? These descriptions remind me of Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory where the rivers lakes and streams were made out of chocolate—except I don't think his clouds rained chocolate. What importance this has to me as a writer is knowing that other planets can have a climate where water can be replaced by something else.

The possibilities are endless. Can you imagine a nitrous oxide based planet—everyone would be laughing all the time. Then there's the apocalyptic version of the story, Earth becomes Titan due to green house gasses—it's raining coffee!

That's enough for now.

KFran

Top Ten List of Favorite Scientific American Email Subjects

2011-03-28T10:40:00.000-04:00

I receive emails from Scientific American on all sorts of subjects. They send me on average about three emails a day, and sometimes even six. It's hard to keep up with all the science reading, so sometimes I just look at the headlines. Here are my favorites from this year:

Biomechanics of the Flea Leap
Tiny Satellites Make Orbit Affordable
Physics: Beer Batter Is Better
Even Lab Animals Are Too Fat
Genetic Weapons to Combat Argentine Ant
African Farmers Beat Drought with Trees
Kepler Spacecraft Finds 6 New Exoplanets
The Fish Farm Revolution
The Most Distant Object Ever Seen
The Slimming Effect of Being Neurotic

From fleas, to beer, to trees to fish -- Scientific American really does seem to cover it all. To find out more information on any subject, just google it. My favorite has to be number ten, because this suits me very well. Oh, and number nine is interesting too because they think they've found a galaxy from the infant universe. I also love the sense of humor in some of these headlines. I think it's important to have a sense of humor if you want to reach more people in your writing, especially if you write about sciencey stuff.

Anyone else have any clever, funny, or particularly interesting email subject headers they want to share? It doesn't have to be about science...

ttl.
Kfran

When anonymous bloggers return. . .

2011-03-21T18:52:00.020-04:00

I follow three terrific blog with two things in common. The first is that they are written anonymously, the second is that the authors of the blogs all took an extended hiatus and CAME BACK around the same time. The only obvious conclusion is that they are the SAME PERSON!

How else would they coordinate disappearing and reappearing at the same time? The only other solution is that they come from an anonymous office pool that had trouble in the economy, so they had to let some folks go. Maybe they recently hired some new folks to blog on these blogs.

Here is the list of blogs:

The Intern
In her words: "THE INTERN was the unpaid toiler on the publishing house floor, licking stamps, reading slush, and copy-editing your train-wreck of a manuscript (for free) because the "real" copyeditor is down with the genital crabs."

Editorial Ass
In her words: "I'm a recovering editorial assistant. I'm like most of my kind: impoverished coffee-and-gin survivalists, underpaid but ambitious, bitter but hopeful."

Editorial Anonymous
In her words: "Editorial Anonymous' anecdotes are mostly true. Names of authors, illustrators, editors, agents, publishers, manuscripts, and a few random nouns have been changed to protect her ass"

You tell me you don't see the commonalities between these three blogs? Am I right, are these written by the same person? Maybe by her past, present, and future self? Or were they written by Romanian techies hired through ODesk?

I'm sure there's a conspiracy theory here, will you help me figure it out?

ttl

Internet Trouble? Try a MiFi.

2011-03-14T14:38:00.007-04:00

This is what I say to people with bad internet connections. Get a MiFi. We used to have satellite, the small business package. It sucked. Now we have MiFi and are able to function as regular internetees again.

So, if you live out in the sticks, consider switching over. Our satelellite ran us $200 a month. MiFi is only $40. MiFi is cute! MiFi can fit in the palm of your hand.

tt.

Chromatics Attack Review on Amazon

2011-03-04T12:26:00.000-05:00

My first review for Chromatics Attack is posted on Amazon -- here's a link to it. My favorite part of the review is this quote:

"Anyone who recalls a childhood with the freedom to investigate the streets in search of everything unknown will love this story."

And for the science minded:

"This is the first adventure with refracting lights testing Isaac Newton's theories."

Oh, and this is clever too:

"Emison teams with fraternal twins who actually didn't even come from the same womb."

Why can't I come up with a summary like this? Anyway, thanks for the review Janie, you are super duper awesome!

..ttl

Tourmaline is very pretty

2011-02-28T08:00:00.000-05:00

Tourlamine is a crystal-like gem that's composed of a bunch of different materials, such as Iron, Aluminum, Magnesium, Lithium, etc. It's very cool because it's found in a wide variety of colors, including pink and purple and green. Here's two from the Wikipedia article (both public domain pics)

The one looks like a pink exclamation mark. I'd use it in my writing if I could.

This one looks like a colorful town after an earth quake.

For more pictures of Tourmaline, google it. This is also an interesting substance, because it's one of the things that doesn't absorb light in the shadow world. There are caves full of the stuff there, and some, that no one knows about, even lead here.

I love rocks!

The Brain's Dark Energy

2011-02-21T07:00:00.000-05:00

Recently I read an article in Scientific American March 2010 edition by Marcus E. Rachle. It was about mysterious brain activity that happens when we are at rest,
daydreaming, taking the subway, sleeping. I guess people used to think that the brain's circuits were turned off when we were resting, but actually the brain is using “60 to 80%” of it's capacity on twitter. No, not that twitter. Even when your body is doing external activities, your brain is still twittering about other stuff. Only 20% of the brain energy is spent on the external activity itself.

So, now you ask what the heck is my brain thinking about? The theory is that our brain is constantly planning for the future, the what-if scenario. (Here's where I point out that I'm no scientist, so I could've gotten the context of the article all wrong.) Like while I'm typing this blog post, my brain is really thinking about, what if I am electrocuted right now, or what if a giant meteor falls out of the sky, or what if my son suddenly throws up on me. OK, so that's what my brain thinks about consciously, but most people's brains think about this stuff subconsciously.

The brain has to work very hard interpreting the information that we see. “10 billion bits per second arrive at the Retina” and only “10,000 bits per second make it to the visual cortex.” So, the “brain makes constant predictions.” We can only process a small amount of the information we see, it is up to the brain to interpret it correctly. How on earth so many people's brains interpret the information the same way is beyond me. I guess that's why there's a whole discipline called Philosophy to answer that question.

Anyway, it fascinates me to think about how my brain is so concerned about my well being. It really cares about protecting me and my soul. I wonder what it's thinking about right now. If it's planning my future, how far in advance does
it go? A couple of minutes, hours, years—and if it is years, can I tap into that and find out my future?

TTL
KFran

What do we do with all this CO2?

2011-02-12T07:00:00.002-05:00

Regardless of who you think is responsible for global warming, or if you even think it exists, the fact remains that you can look at our neighbouring moons and planets to see the effect CO2 has on atmospheres. Titan and Venus are excellent examples of the how greenhouse gasses effect living conditions on their surfaces. Luckily, companies (and not just science ) are looking at ways to store Carbon Dioxide underground. Some ideas for storage are deep saline aquifers, nearly empty oil wells, and volcanic rock.

A Unversity of Texas team experimented with pumping CO2 into empty oil wells in Texas, the technology is called carbon sequestration. They say that these porus rock formations extend for miles and miles across multiple states. Oil wells that have run 'dry' are usually porous sandstone mixed with salt water. The area underground can hold enough CO2 for 1000 years of consumption at the present level and the oil companies are already injecting CO2 into oil wells to increase production, so they know how to do it.

Volcanic rock is of particular interest because it turns Carbon Dioxide into limestone. Oceanic basalt off of the east coast is holding as much as 1 billion metric tons of CO2 right now. The idea is that we would pipe our CO2 pollution to these underwater basalt formations and the Co2 would mix with the basalt to form limestone. These would work as saline aquifers. Unfortunately, Pollution Pipelines are very expensive to build.

It's interesting that they are coming up with some ideas that don't involve the individual having to sell their car. I have hope they will figure something out. Just in case they don't, I'm off to write a catastrophic short on what happens if they don't. Perhaps it will involve a semi-successful application of Co2 under water that leads to a giant explosion, releasing more Co2 than was ever in the atmousphere before.

Yea, that's a good one.
KFran

ttl
kfc

Science in Kindergarten -- YES!!

2011-02-07T08:31:00.000-05:00

I have a couple of kids in kindergarten that love science. In fact, their favorite things to talk about are planets and stars, engines and gears, everything that crawls in the backyard. The unfortunate thing is that they do not teach much science in school at their age. That is why when I ran across an article about Purdue University's Scientific Literary Project, I became interested.

Purdue University has introduced a lesson plan that incorporates scientific inquiry with simple experiments even young children can enjoy. The best part about the program is that kids learn to read, write, and do math--the essentials of Kindergarten--as they are introduced to science. Their philosophy is that kids have a natural instinct for controlled experiments, and this should be applied early.

I've taken some ideas from their site, and started a science journal for each of my boys. The key to their journal is that they make predictions, take measurements, and make observations about what they are studying and write it down. In school, my boys are required to do the same thing, except with books of fiction. While I love fiction, (I spend many hours writing it!) I would love to see schools replace these books of fiction with some non-fiction. Learning about science while you learn to read and write is an awesome idea!

They have two guides that parents can download. For more information, click here for Purdue's site.

ttl
KFran

Kindle Format Made Easy

2011-02-01T12:02:00.002-05:00

I recently decided to Kindle one of my books, called Chromatics Attack. In doing so, I learned a lot about the process, and thought it would be good to blog about how I did it. I converted my own Word document to HTML, and then to the kindle format. I did all of my edits in Word, and then saved the file to TXT to get rid of all the word formatting.

If you don’t know HTML, you only need a few tags which I will tell you about now. You can use your Word search and replace feature to add them all to your document. I know there are a million different ways to edit HTML, but this is how I did it. A couple of the steps are manual, like adding the italics and bold HTML code, but I didn’t have a lot of these, so it didn’t take too long. If you do have lots, I recommend doing it another way.

The exact steps I took are as follows:

Open up my document in Word (I used 2007)
Make sure the document is single spaced, and that each chapter heading starts with the word “Chapter” (this is needed to search and replace later)

NOTE: REMOVE SPACES AFTER ALL HTML < SYMBOLS--
BLOGGER WOULDN'T LET ME DISPLAY HTML WITHOUT A SPACE.

On the first line of your document, place this: < body >
Make sure it is the very first line, before the table of contents, title page, etc.
On the last line of your document, place this: < /body >

To add HTML paragraph tags, do this in MS Word:
Find “^p”, replace with “^p< p>< /p>”
(NOTE: No need to put the quotes in the find/replace, just the text between the quotes)

To add HTML italics tags, do this in MS Word:
Find format->font->italics
Manually insert < i> before your italics
Manually insert < /i> after your italics

To add HTML bold tags, do this in MS Word:
Find format->font->bold
Manually insert < b> before your italics
Manually insert < /b> after your italics

To change your chapters in to formatted headings, do this:
Find “chapter”, replace with “< H2>Chapter X< /H2> < br>< br>< br>< br>”
(where Chapter X is the number of the chapter – adding the chapter number will have to be done manually)

For example:
Find “chapter”, replace with “< H2>Chapter 1< /H2> (add 1 manually)
Find “chapter”, replace with “< H2>Chapter 2< /H2> (add 2 manually)

To add HTML/Kindle Line breaks and Table of Contents Tags , do this:
Find “chapter”, replace with “< p>< mbp:pagebreak /> < /p> < a name="TOC"/>
< a name="chapX"/>< p>chapter< /p>”
(where ChapX is the number of the chapter – adding the chapter number will have to be done manually) Also, note you do need the quotes around “TOC” and “chapX”

For example:
Find “chapter”, replace with < p>< mbp:pagebreak /> < /p>
< a name="TOC"/> < a name="chapX"/>< p>chapter< /p> (added 1 manually)
Find “chapter”, replace with < p> < /p>
< a name="chapX"/>< p>chapter< /p> (added 2 manually)

I hope I haven’t confused you too much.

Your final chapter heading for each chapter should look like this:

< p> < p>< /p>
< a name="TOC"/> < a name="chap3"/>
< center>< h2>Chapter 3: < /h2>< /center>
< br>< br>< br>< br>

Perhaps you could copy this text out, and just replace it for each of your chapters. You’ll notice, I also have a < center>txt< /center> tag in there to center my chapter headings. Your final HTML formatting step step is to add the table of contents at the beginning of your book, like this:

< mbp:pagebreak /> < p>< /p>
< a name="TOC"/>
< h2>Table of Contents< /h2>
< p>
< a href="#start">Chapter 1< /a>< br>
< a href="#chap2">Chapter 2< /a>< br>
< a href="#chap3">Chapter 3< /a>< br>
< a href="#chap4">Chapter n< /a>< br>
< /p>
< p> < p>< /p>

Then save your word document as a .txt file (and say ‘yes’ when it says: “are you sure, because you are going to lose your formatting” – you won’t lose your html and that’s exactly what you want)

Now, from your file menu, rename your .txt file to .html you are now set to upload to Mobipocket Creator, which is a free downloadable program that is pretty self-explanatory.

If you have any questions about html, please post something in the comments section, and I will try to help you out. Good luck formatting, and let me know how it goes! Oh, and if you want to see how it looks, you can always buy my book for the cheap price of .99 by clicking on the cover of Chromatics Attack on the right pane.

Cheers
Karen

Have you seen the Noteslate?

2011-01-31T07:07:00.000-05:00

My husband just skype'd me a link to a company called Noteslate. They are producing a tablet that you can write on that looks just like paper. It looks very cool, but you can't do anything with it except write notes. No surfing the internet, or reading books, just doodling. I still think I like it, because it's just sooo pretty!

You can save the current screen, and upload it to your computer via USB. What it doesn't seem to do is convert your text to font. I can imagine my knapsack filled with a kindle, an ipad, a noteslate, a laptop, an iphone, It all is a bit confusing, but this is the direction we are headed!

The Universe in My Mind

2011-01-15T17:31:00.000-05:00

I don’t believe the universe is big. I have my own ideas about that. I think a bunch of optical illusions trick us into thinking the universe is bigger than it really is. There are only a couple of galaxies, maybe two or three—perhaps even just one. I also believe that these galaxies aren’t really that big either—another optical illusion. You see, what happens is that light refracts at such special angles in space, that it makes us think we are looking at new things, when we are just looking at old things another way.

To prove my theory, think of a visit to the house-of-mirrors at your local amusement park. You see yourself a hundred times, right? That’s because there are dozens of mirrors reflecting your image over and over and over again into infinity. That is exactly what happens when we look at outer space. We are really looking at the same galaxy over and over again. The reason these images of the galaxy don’t look exactly alike is because of the way light zig-zags through the universe, and because of the fact that light takes so long to get from here to there. So, we end up thinking there are hundreds of galaxies, when in fact there’s only one.

So, you see the universe is actually very small, it’s just surrounded by mirrors so we think it’s bigger. Oh, and if you think I’m serious, know that I’m just a mom that likes coming up with funny ideas about space. Of course, I’m not a scientist, so my ideas have no basis in facts. They are just rattling around in my head, and I like sharing them with you. But if anyone offers me the Nobel Prize in physics, I will gladly accept it.

ttl
KFran

The Shadow World

2011-01-08T07:00:00.005-05:00

THE CHROMATICS ATTACK takes place in two worlds—our world and a shadow world. The people from the shadow world are actually normal human beings, who absorb so much light that they appear as shadows. In fact, their whole world—the buildings, the trees, the sky—absorbs so much light, that it appears dark.

The shadow world is also an exact duplicate of our world. Where the Golden Gate Bridge is here, it is there. Where the Empire State building is here, it is there. Where Jennifer Smith is here, she is there. If Jennifer Smith goes to visit the shadow world, she will find an exact copy of herself, except in shadow -form.

Unfortunately, the shadow world is in a bit of trouble, because it’s evaporating into nothing. You see—there is a barrier between our world and the shadow world called the In-Between Place. This barrier is dark and scary. It’s filled with nothing but vapor and empty space, and it is dissolving on the shadow world side. Where it disintegrates, shadow buildings evaporate into it. Whole sections of the country have disappeared into the In-Between Place.

Because their country is being destroyed, some shadow-people want to come to our world, and take their duplicate’s place. Who could really blame them—their world is falling apart. If they didn’t murder their duplicates, maybe we’d be nicer to them. If there weren’t issues with the balance of the universe, maybe they could all come over.

So that’s why we need to stop them!

…

Cover Art for Heaven's Fisherman

2011-01-06T07:33:00.011-05:00

I have a partial of one of my books, Heaven's Fisherman, up on a writerly website, so that people can read it, rate it, and give me feedback. The poor book has a boring cover, one of the templates from the site. When I opened my email this morning, I was suprised to find a BEAUTIFUL cover designed by one of my fellow writerly friends, Bradley Wind. Brad is an awesome artist, and a great writer, and a wonderful person to know.

Here is the watermarked version of what he sent me:

Isn't it pretty? To find more out about Bradley Wind, you cand find his art and writing HERE at his website. Now I have to figure out how to pay his generosity forward. Maybe I'll make someone a spaghetti dinner.

ttl

KFran

My New Years Resolutions

2011-01-01T01:00:00.001-05:00

I always make new years resolutions but never blog about them. I thought if I actually blog about them I would remember what they were. Then, maybe I would actually keep them. So, in no particular order, here they are:

I resolve to write two blog posts a week. They can be about anything. They can be short or long, silly or serious. They can be posts with pictures, or plain. They just have to be.

I resolve to finish my latest book, Heaven's Fishermen. Come on, I already have the rough draft. What's taking me so long to polish it? I here by resolve to make more time for writing.

I resolve to query my favorite agents with my latest work, but no more. I have a list of about thirty favorite agents, if I am rejected by all of them I am not ready.

I resolve to figure out how to format a book on Kindle. It can't be that hard, and I am a bit computer savvy, how hard could it be? Certainly I can't do the art work, though—can I? I feel another blog post coming on.

I resolve to be patient, and not watch my inbox. There are plenty of other things I can do besides watch my inbox, like writing.

I resolve to do some research on publishing science articles for kids. Maybe I can even get that physics degree I always wanted—not too realistic. Maybe I should start by subscribing to more magazines like Nature.

I resolve to start a new book next year. Maybe the one with the burning city or the pockets of hell.

I resolve to be more social, maybe attend a writer's conference. Can I attend a writer's conference even if I'm not published? I know the answer to that, but I've always held back because of that reason.

I resolve to have more exciting resolutions next year.

Ttl

Kfran

Visualizing My McGuffin

2010-12-22T07:06:00.003-05:00

Time again to post a picture that helped me visualize my story as I was writing it. A key part of the Chromatics Attack is a moon rock, you might say it's my McGuffin. If you look at the wiki entry for McGuffin, it is "A plot element that catches the readers attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction." I had no idea what was going to drive my story forward, or what my characters were willing to do and sacrifice in order to obtain it until I saw this picture:

This is the Apollo 15 Genesis Rock, a moon rock retrieved from the moon by Apollo 15 astronauts and a key plot element of The Chromatics Attack. This is what drives Emison forward into the shadow world, besides the turning into a shadow and disappearance of her mother part. I needed a goal for her, something to obtain and this became it. You can see how it is a marvelous thing to want to retrieve, all sparkly and shiny and glowing and almost edible, also perfect for my story. But I'm not going to tell you how it relates to my story, you'll just have to read it to find out!

PS, What is your McGuffin?

TTL
KFran

What I learned from Scientific American

2010-12-18T20:41:00.000-05:00

From the December 2010 version

There's a camp called Sci Foo hosted by Nature Publishing Group, The O'Reilly Media Group and Google. The name alone makes me want to go to this camp. There's also a festival called the U.S. Science and Engineering Festival—I wonder what kind of rides and shows they have there.

Neuroscientists are hard at work reading people's minds. They do it by using brain scans. I wonder when they will have that technology in airports to detect terroristic thought.

There's a field called theoretical astrophysicists, now I know what I want to be in my next life. They build simulations of 'exoplanet environments' and there's one called Gliese 581g. I like the name Gliese, it's a lovely girl or boy name.

Edible Foam is somehow worthy of a Scientific American article and mathematicians are very excited about it.

Speech recognition software has advanced lots since I last looked at it. I always wanted to use this for my writing. Will have to do more research and evaluate some products and post my findings separately. There's only one company left named Nuance Communications and their product is called Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

ttl

KFran

String Theory and Absolute Zero

2010-12-12T17:05:00.004-05:00

So, what do absolute zero and string theory have in common? I have my own theory—and it’s not based on any kind of science. I had the pleasure of sleeping through Nova’s show on absolute zero, and a strange thing happened, lots of facts stuck in my mind. Then I had a dream about Nova’s show on string theory and started piecing things together. No offense to Nova, I didn’t really want to sleep through the show, but my hubby turned it on while I was falling into lala-land.

What my sleep addled brain garnered from the Absolute Zero show was this: Another state of matter is achieved when particles are cooled to absolute zero. We know of three states of matter: gas, liquid and solid. Now, they have identified a forth state of matter called – slop. Well, I don’t really know what they called it, but it sounds like slop to me. This is because they described it by saying the particles go all hay wire and get all confused and while they are in one place, they are actually in another place and a third place and so on.

What my solidly-awake brain garnered from the String Theory show was this: Things within an atom—like electrons and quarks—are one-dimensional strings that vibrate and wobble around. These one dimensional strings somehow require several extra dimensions to the universe to exist. So, string theorists theorize that there are many more dimensions to our universe than just the one we live in. This means that I can possibly exist here there and everywhere. In fact, I could be me in all sorts of different dimensions.

So, how does Absolute Zero tie in with String Theory? The answer is simple. Way out there, in the middle of space, where it is really cold, Absolute Zero is achieved. When Absolute Zero is achieved, particles form another kind of state – the exact kind of state needed to create other dimensions.

Stated differently, the wonkiness found in matter at absolute zero is exactly the same wonkiness found in string theory’s other dimensions. Does that make sense? It does to me. So, to get to other dimensions, we just have to get to absolute zero. Does anyone want to come with me while I try?

Cheers
KFran

Heaven's Fishermen

2010-11-26T11:23:00.003-05:00

So, I thought I'd post some flash fiction of the opening paragraphs of my newest project.

It's about a guardian angel who has to save a girl from suicide in order to gain his freedom back on earth. Except, the girl doesn't want to die and he isn't really a guardian angel.

The Target

Julius interrupts my Ping-Pong game as I am about to claim victory, so what if I’m playing against myself. They've found me another one, lucky number thirteen. I used to think heaven would be a gas—nights filled with super-sonic jet packs and football games. Visions of endless Ping-Pong tournaments never entered my mind. It's dull up here, like the Archies.

I follow Julius down the white halls of heaven's-halfway-house towards the visiting room. They could jazz the place up a bit with some green and yellow, but they're pretty strict about the color scheme this close to earth. White, blue. More white, more blue.

"Focus on the job, Dax." Julius falls in step next to me like he knows I'm thinking of something other than the twelve that came before lucky number thirteen.

"You know how hard it is to stop someone with a one way ticket to—"

"Don't use that word." Julius's robe snaps as he grabs my elbow. I wonder how he doesn’t trip over his long, flowing regalness. He pulls me along fast, like he can't wait to get rid of me.

Do You ODESK?

2010-11-11T20:19:00.000-05:00

There's this great website called ODESK that I only know of because my husband is a software developer. It's a super useful marketplace for any writer looking for a bit of freelance work. I'd strongly suggest checking it out if you want to make a few bucks to pay the electric bill or bar tab.

You can find it HERE.

It's mostly for software developers who feel comfortable working with remote teams. People place jobs in the marketplace, then other people have a chance to bid on them, or apply for them. They have all sorts of categories, but the ones that apply to writers are:

Technical Writing
Website Content Writing
Blog and Article Writing
Copywriting
Translation
Creative Writing

Each category has a list of jobs waiting to be filled. Odesk does a good of screening employers and employees – they actually have software that can monitor productivity and has gained a good rep among techies. Right now there are over 1,400 jobs for writers.

Beware, though, that this is an international marketplace, and sometimes the pay reflect that. You can get paid as little as $2.00 an hour from someone in Romania, or as much as $20.00. If you are a fast writer, you can bid on the flat rate jobs and get paid a decent amount.

Anyway, just thought I'd pass on the tip in case anyone was interested.

Cheers

KFran

I'm Baack!

2010-11-11T15:02:00.000-05:00

I'm back from a really long blogging vacation. Off to find new topics.

Sangria, the Nectar of the Gods

2010-10-10T10:16:00.000-04:00

Ok, I don't really know what kind of Nectar the Gods drink, but I can tell you that Sangria is awesome. Now, if you're like me, you're not to fond of red wine. I've been told for years how healthy it is to drink it, especially the dry-dry-dry stuff. How the French live to like 120 because they drink a glass of red wine a day. How it's supposed to lower the risk of heart attack and raise your good cholesterol. So, I tried to like it. I really did. I probably tried a hundred different kinds of cheep and expensive varieties -- even the local scuppernong variety (yuck!) they have here in NC. I just never could aquire the taste.

Da. Da. - Da. Da. My solution to the problem turned out to be Sangria. I love fruit, apples, bananas, pears, you name it. No, I don't use bananas in my Sangria, but I do use lemons, nectarines, peaches and oranges.

My Sangria recipe goes something like this:

1. Equal parts Red Wine and Ginger Ale (yes, I tried club soda, didn't like it)
2. Some orange juice (maybe a cupish)
3. One lemon, sliced, not peeled.
4. A bunch of oranges, nectarines and peaches
5. Some ice in your cup.

That pretty much sums it up and makes any icky yucky wine taste marvelous, wonderful. Really, if you're not a wine connoisseur, you should try it. The health benefits are worth it and you get to eat some yummy wine-soaked fruit after you finish your glass.

cheers
Karen Carr

Mind Mapping Twilight

2010-10-09T12:39:00.000-04:00

So, one of the tools I use for writing is a mind mapping tool. I use this for my job when I'm mapping requirements for software development and creating project plans -- the joys of being a project manger. But, I've found it very useful for writing as well. It's a brainstorming tool you can use for mapping out your chapters, characters, plots, anything you want to use it for. I thought it would be fun to look at the first 20 pages of Twilight (you know, that Stephanie Meyer book) to see what it would look like in a map.

Here it is:

You can't really read that, can you?

Here's a close up:

And another one:

The tool is call FreeMind and -- yes -- it's free. It's easy to download and it's easy to figure out how to use. It's good for people who don't necessarily work linearly. You can represent, words, ideas, color themes, all sorts of things.

When I mapped the first twenty pages of Twilight, I noticed two clever things, and I wonder if Mrs. Meyer did this on purpose. First, Bella thinks that 'no one will bite her' when she moves to Forks. And then when she sees Edward eat lunch for the first time, there is an un-bitten APPLE. Hmmm. These are both things you could brainstorm in your mind mapping tool.

Try it out. It's free. Free Mind

-kfran

The Shadow World's Sun

2010-09-20T14:18:00.004-04:00

Many times I have thought about the sun in The Chromatics Attack shadow world. It is a giant blue ball of liquid flames, much like our sun except shades of blue and gray instead of red and orange.

These pictures taken by STEREO’s SECCHI/Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope and available on Nasa's Earth Observatory site are actually pictures of the sun in the shadow world, NASA just doesn't know it yet. They think it's actually our sun. hah!

They say that ultraviolet imaging is not visible to the human eye, so they they had to color these pictures blue, but that's not true. They are really pictures of the sun in the shadow world and what a lovely sun it is because you can actually look at it and it won't burn your retinas out. Emison thinks it's beautiful and so would you if you ever got a chance to see it!

(OK, these are really pictures of our sun and thanks NASA -- I hope you can take a joke -- he.he.he)

TL
KFran

This Week's NYT Best Seller List

2010-09-13T08:20:00.000-04:00

I try to check the NYT Children’s Book best seller list every week. Usually there are two or three new books on it, and some that have been there forever, and some that are just starting to add up the weeks. Usually Hunger Games is on the list. So, this week something strange happened. Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay are mysteriously missing from the list. Something else strange happened—there are SIX new books on the list. They are as follows:

• THE CLOCKWORK ANGEL by Cassandra Clare – the first book in a new series
• HALO by Alexandra Adornetto – who published her first book when she was fifteen
• UNRAVELED by Gena Showalter – the second in a series of Harlequin teen
• PARANORMALCY, by Kiersten White – the first in a series and a Debut!
• MONSTER HIGH, by Lisi Harrison – the first in a series
• THE HAUNTED, by Jessica Verday – the second in a series

We had one new writer on the list, and I’m going to order her book right away. All of the books have fantasy elements such as paranormals, monsters and angels. I plan on reading all of them to see what makes them shine. And if someone could let me know what happened to Hunger Games, I'd really appreciate it!

ttl
KFran

Dialogue Tag Conundrum

2010-09-07T20:19:00.000-04:00

I need some help with a dialogue tag. What do you do when you are telling a story from a twelve year old MC and you want to refer to her mother in dialogue tags. Do you use Mrs. Smith, or her first name, or mom, what do you do? I have something like this:

"Go away," said Molly.
"Not a chance," said her mom.

OR

"Not a chance," said Mrs. Smith.

OR

"Not a chance," said Judy.

Which is the preferable method? I've been using 'her mom,' but I feel like I'm over using it and it doesn't seem to apply to every situation. Is there a rule for something like this?

Publishers Weekly Best Selling Author Facts

2010-09-01T06:47:00.000-04:00

Recently I did a post on best selling book statistics from this article by Publishers Weekly. To give you some background, the article lists the top selling books for 2008/2009 along with the number of copies sold for each book. This time I decided to take a look at the authors to see what interesting (or not so interesting) facts I could comb out of the list.

Here's what I came up with:

There were 102 authors on the list.
52 authors were female and 50 were male, almost even
The average age for female authors was 57
The average age for male authors was 59
The youngest female author was 36 (Emma McLaughlin)
The youngest male author was 39 (Jim Butcher)
The oldest female author was 83 (Mary Higgins Clark)
The oldest male author was 93 (Sidney Sheldon)
The number of authors over 60 years old: 44 out of 88
The number of authors over 70 years old: 12 out of 88
The number of authors under 40 years old: 3 out of 88
The most common author age: Four way tie between 50, 60, 62, and 64
There were at least two deceased authors on the list (Sidney Sheldon, Steig Larsson)
The 15 authors whose ages I couldn't find were all female (hehe)

I found it amazing that 12 of the authors were over 70, that makes me think they are really happy doing what they're doing and won't retire until death. I think it also means that it takes years of dedication to get onto this list, sure there are a few debut authors, but most of these people have written dozens of books. I hope that other unpublished authors found this list as encouraging as I did!

Cheers
KFran

Publshers Weekly Sales Ranking

2010-08-22T01:01:00.052-04:00

As an author, I've always been curious to know how many copies of books are sold each year. This information is very hard to find, somtimes only available through the Nielson Book Scan service which you have to pay for. Once in a while I come across an article which details number of copies sold as this Publishers Weekly Sales Ranking article does for Fiction and Non Fiction Hardcovers sold for the calendar year of 2009.

I took some time to analyze the facts and this is what I came up with:

Trivial facts about the 114 Books on the list:

Total Books Sold: 37,648,454 +
Top Author: Dan Brown 5,543,643
Average # of copies sold: 281,621 (minus Mr. Brown)
# of copies under 200,000 sold: 59
# of copies over 500,000 sold: 21
# of times “A Novel” appears at the end of the title: 29
Average Title Word Count: 2.9 (not including words ‘A Novel’)
Most books from the Thriller/Mystery/Romance Genres

Writers appearing more than twice:

James Patterson 5
Clive Cussler 5
Danielle Steel 3

Publishers appearing more than three times:

Putnam 24 (hello?)
St Martin’s 13
William Morrow 12
Little, Brown 9
Doubleday 8
Ballantine 8
Atria 7
Delacorte 5
Grand Central 5
S&S 5
Scribner 5
Harper 4
Knopf 4

Debut Fiction Authors:
(some of these authors are famous for other things)

Donna Van Liere Christmas Secret
Glenn Beck The Christmas Sweater
Guillermo Del Toro The Strain
Katherine Howe The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
Kathryn Stockett The Help
Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Stieg Larsson The Girl Who Played with Fire

It's good to see at least one or two debut novels making it here. My next post will be on author statistics, so come back to read it!

TTL
KFran

Summer Reading Quotes

2010-08-17T23:26:00.026-04:00

I’ve been reading a number of great books this summer. Using my Kindle, I’ve been able to clip my favorite quotes from the books and save them to a file. Kindle makes it super easy to create a list of quotes, so I thought I’d display some here.

I find it helpful to analyze this stuff when I'm polishing my own writing. Sometimes I clip quotes for the way a metaphor unfolds, or for clever use of dialogue and characterization, or simply because of the beauty of the sentence or passage.

Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)

“I told you nobody ought never to fight him. No, I guess it was Candy I told.”

As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment.

And the meanness and the plannings and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face.

The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)

The trees are columns of slick, brindled bark like muscular animals overgrown beyond all reason.

Memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass.

I’d slide this awful story off my shoulders, flatten it, sketch out our crimes like a failed battle plan

The Chromatics Attack (Karen Carr)

Mom's pale skin turned the color of mercury, shiny and reflective, before she deflated into a black silhouette.

Power lines cleaved through ancient pines and twisted oaks following the path of the train straight up into the Smokey Mountains.

She looked down at her white gym shoes, stained with mud, and her bag on the ground, its green fabric unraveling in spots. Seven seconds. Her feet were frozen to the platform. Focus, she told herself.

The Stand (Stephen King)

Charlie patted her hand briefly and said: “It’s going to be all right, hon.” By dawn they were running east across Nevada and Charlie was coughing steadily.

Being close to him was like squatting on the edge of an open barbecue pit where good coals have been laid.

Sally’s hobby was doing paint-by-the-numbers pictures of Christ, and they were all over the living room in nice frames.

Tinkers (Paul Harding)

From the rented hospital bed, placed in the middle of his own living room, he saw insects running in and out of imaginary cracks in the ceiling plaster.

Pollen and sparrows, rain and the intrepid squirrels he had spent half of his life keeping out of the bird feeders would breach the house.

The clouds halted, paused for an instant, and plummeted onto his head.

Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)

A tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails; and the sabre-cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white.

Then followed a battle of looks between them but the captain soon knuckled under, put up his weapon, and resumed his seat, grumbling like a beaten dog.

He had the look of a man who sees a ghost, or the evil one, or something worse, if anything can be; and, upon my word, I felt sorry to see him, all in a moment, turn so old and sick.

So, what are your favorite quotes from your summer reading material?

TTL
KFran

Missy's Butterfly Clip

2010-08-12T07:03:00.002-04:00

In the Chromatics Attack, Missy has beautiful hair and in it she likes to put beautiful things like this green butterfly hair clip. This picture is another visual that I used to create my portrait of Missy. It's one of her favorite accessories and can always be found clipped in her hair. In this version, the gems are fake, in Missy's the gems are real, diamonds, rubies and amethyst. This clip sparkles so much, it even keeps its color in the shadow world!

Working with a Freelance Editor

2010-08-06T13:05:00.003-04:00

I decided to use a freelance editor to help me with The Chromatics Attack. I was lucky to have one recommended to me by a publishing house and also lucky she was willing to work with me (you never know!) I recently received my first editorial letter from her and I thought it would be fun to blog about how I interpreted it.

First off, I felt a little daunted when I received it because it was five pages long and each sentence offered a suggestion. I am so glad I decided to do this because this letter helped trigger ideas and identify areas where there were holes in my manuscript. It consisted mostly of questions which I thought was very helpful because it forced me to think about how to answer them within the context of the story.

Having never received an editorial letter, I didn’t know how to approach it. I work as a project manager during the day, so I decided to approach it the way I would approach a new project. I broke the editorial letter down into the smallest parts possible and then opened up Excel. I entered each part as a line on my spreadsheet.

To get an idea of what it looks like, I’ve posted an example here. The wording in the description is my short hand from the suggestions made by the freelance editor.

After writing down the description of each item I had to fix, or question I had to answer, I ranked them by order of complexity with number one being the easiest to fix and number six being the hardest.

I then sorted them by their complexity and put a time estimate against each task to figure out how long it would take me. My time estimate is broken down into what I can accomplish each week, for instance all #1s in the estimate I plan to complete in the first week, #2s in the second week, etc.

I decided to start with the easy fixes first and work my way through to the harder fixes. I plan to blog more about the re-write process and what I learn as I go through the list.

So, how do you approach your edits?

KFran

My Top Ten List of Agents

2010-08-02T07:01:00.003-04:00

I’ll be getting ready to query again in a couple of months and I thought I’d share with you my top ten list of agencies that I will be targeting. These are my favorite, dream agencies and although I’m certainly not discounting a new agency, I sure would be happy with one of these.

Here are my not so special requirements:

• They have to represent middle grade and young adult genres
• They have to be accepting of science fiction and fantasy
• They have to be open to new writers and unsolicited queries
• They have to use email submissions – I’m a techno geek
• They have to represent books I’ve enjoyed or similar to my writing style.
• They can’t have a ‘no response means no’ policy that is strictly enforced. I want a rejection email!

I actually have over twenty on my list, so I’m not being quite truthful when I say these are my all time favs, but it’s a good place to start if you are researching agencies. Don’t take my word for it, do your own research!

Here are the Agencies in alphabetical order:

• Adams Literary
• Curtis Brown
• Foundry Literary and Media
• Greenhouse Literary
• Jean V. Naggar
• Laura Dail
• Liza Dawson Assoc
• Nelson Literary
• Upstart Crow
• Writers House

And maybe I’ll post the other top ten in a couple of weeks. I feel bad about leaving some of them off; it’s very hard to pick ten, or maybe I won't post the other list because then when I get an agent and they read my blog and they see they are not on my list, I can just say -- you're on the other list!

TTL
KFran

Silly Name Game

2010-07-26T07:39:00.004-04:00

I ran across this website that does some silly things to your name. Here's what I found out about my name.

Karen Carr:

33% of the letters are vowels. Of one million first and last names we looked at, 60.6% have a higher vowel make-up. This means it is averagely envoweled.
In ASCII binary it is... 01001011 01100001 01110010 01100101 01101110 00100000 01000011 01100001 01110010 01110010
Backwards, it is Nerak Rrac... nice ring to it, huh?
In Pig Latin, it is Arenkay Arrcay.
People with this first name are probably: Female. So, they are constantly overcharged for beauty products.
My personal power animal is the Dwarf Zebu
Your 'Numerology' number is 8. If it wasn't bulls**t, it would mean that you are motivated by material success and have an aptitude for business, managerial and financial matters. This comes through your uncommon discipline and persistence.
According to the US Census Bureau°, 0.667% of US residents have the first name 'Karen' and 0.047% have the surname 'Carr'. The US has around 300 million residents, so we guesstimate there are 940 Americans who go by the name 'Karen Carr'.

Isn't that silly?
KFran

Publishers Lunch Deluxe

2010-07-21T01:38:00.003-04:00

I subscribe to Publisher’s Marketplace premium services, which is $20 a month and highly recommended (by me and others.) It sends you daily and weekly updates of what’s selling. I’m going to post some general observations of this week’s summary of books sold, but to see the details you must subscribe yourself.

More non fiction is sold per week than fiction. Hopefully this week was very slow, there were only 25 sales reported. Out of those, it was pretty evenly dispersed between Inspirational, Thriller, Romance, Other, Children’s Middle, Children’s Picture and YA. The previous week, about 47 sales were reported and the week before there was 35 with romance and YA taking the lead in sales.

In analyzing the YA/Middle grade titles that were sold, it seems that the majority were uh, not fantasy, like I mean based in reality. There were only a hand full of fantasy/sci fi type books. Also, it seems that multiple book deals are common in this genre.

Foreign rights are sold all over the world, including Dutch rights, Chinese electronic rights, Turkish rights, Indonesian rights, German rights, Brazilian rights, well you get the idea. Lots of rights are sold to lots of countries, which must be good for writers. But my guess is you need an agent to help you out with this kinda stuff.

Anyway, that’s my brief rundown of the lunch. If you are a writer, I’d strongly recommend getting a subscription to this service because it’s a great way to see what’s being bought and who the agents are that sold it. It is what I used to make my top ten list of agents to query.

TTL
KFran

What I learned from Stephen King

2010-07-16T20:11:00.000-04:00

One of the most useful books I’ve encountered on writing is Stephen King’s book entitled On Writing.

Gosh, I shouldn’t say ‘on writing’ twice in one sentence like I did above, and now I’ve said it again. I’m getting terribly disturbed by my blog’s lack of editing, but I will have to overlook it for now – because I’m one of those writers who takes forever and ever to edit their manuscript and if I did that with a blog post, I would never post anything. So, just imagine this post all fancied up with correct grammar and clever metaphors and you will be as excited about it as I am about Mr. King’s book, On Writing.

Here is a list of things that I learned from the book in no particular order:

He loves his wife. OMG – this was one of my favorite things about the book. His wife is his muse, his partner, his editor and someone amazingly important in his life. I like this because it’s the way I feel about my husband and my family and it’s so nice to see someone cherished in print and not in a romance novel – this is real stuff and I love it!

When editing your manuscript you should look at the quality of the paragraph, not the individual sentence. Previously, I would edit sentence by sentence by sentence, and not one of my sentences seemed to flow into the next. Now, with this wisdom, I edit by paragraph and it makes flaws much easier to see and fix.

Take time to really explore the meaning behind your paragraphs and understand that a vague idea can lead to a clear and specific vision. Use metaphors and your character’s memory to portray your meaning. This I learned more from the way Mr. King writes, than from the way he talks about writing in his book.

You can entertain even if you are writing something that most other writers would consider technical and encyclopedic. I had so much fun reading a book on writing that contained swear words right next to sentences about the Christian faith. Bless you Mr. King!

You don’t need to plot your stories! YAY. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in front of a keyboard with a character sheet before I start to write a story. I can never ever figure out what my characters are like until I start the story. I love that Mr. King encourages us to throw away our outlines and let the characters tell their own stories, because they will do that for you.

There is so much more to this book, you really have to buy it yourself!
And this just in, Stephen King announced his summer reading list, to be found here. How I wish I were on that list, but first I have to get something published!

KFran

Grammar Schmammer

2010-07-06T06:53:00.005-04:00

I've recently done another edit of Chromatics Attack and I can see I have some issues that pop up more than once. I'm going to list them here so I can reference them again if I ever get a chance to rewrite another book. Here it goes...

In vs. Into -- what the heck is the difference between these two? Can you go into a room and in a room, or are you in a room once you're in it? Also, do you put a diamond ring in a box or into a box? Some clarification is needed here.
Duplicate words, check out this paragraph: "She ripped apart the plaster. She pried at the wooden slats under the plaster. It felt like plaster and grease."
Issues with Open: "The closet opened to a pile of laundry..." or "Opened on the bed..." or "The door opened..." I think I use it too much.
Spelling of Gray, is it Gray or Grey?
Sentence fragments all over the place. "Like apples and oranges." or "then when the going flowing river." Microsoft Word helped me out with this, OpenOffice did not. I'll have to post about what I think of grammar checkers later. And I didn't fix all the fragments either, some of them I thought were lovely.
Run on sentences like this: "Having worn the same par of socks on her feet for three days, they stunk, she picked out a new pair." I guess it is a valid sentence, but it's still iffy.
Mixing internal narrative with internal and external action, for instance: "No time to wait for the others (internal narrative), hoping that they could take care of themselves (internal action), she plunged on (external action),"
Redundancy, for instance: "Missy screamed, sounding terrified." Well, duh -- if someone screams, you know they are terrified.
Use of the same word over and over again, my favorite words apparently are: looked, asked, thought, black, like, eyes, get, one, world, back, mom, going, know, door, light and see.
Mixed Metaphor: "Fire hosed size streams of water rushed from the clouds, as if someone had just wrung a giant washcloth dry." Fire hoses bring up a much different image than a washcloth, not good to use both.

Anyway, I'm sure I could think of more, but that's all I have for now.

TTL
KFran

Word Count

2010-07-05T19:15:00.010-04:00

It has come to my attention that not all words are counted equally. I use OpenOffice to write (you know that free office suite that's just as good or better than MS Office) and it comes up with a different word count than Microsoft. It is my understanding that the publishing industry uses MS as a standard, so my word counts are always technically wrong. As I did research on how they are different, it became clear that there is a great debate on what is considered a word in the software world.

Basically, OpenOffice counts more stuff as words including headers and footers and en-dashes and hyphenated words and three spaces, so my OpenOffice documents are always about 2,000 words longer than my Microsoft docs. I tried using a tool on the web called Word Count Tool, but its count is different from both MS and OO.

So, where does that leave me? Am I going to switch to MS word because of this dang word count issue? Hahahahah. Pay money to Microsoft? No way. I don't think it really matters unless I query an agent that gets mad at me for listing the wrong word count, but I don't think that would happen in real life. I'm lucky I'm not one of those writers who is always over acceptable book length for their genre, I'm usually hoovering on the light side, so an extra 2,000 words actually helps me out.

Peace Out

KFran

And I promise to blog more, I didn't think people were actually reading, that's awesome news!!!

PS, I wrote this post in OpenOffice and then copied it here. For some reason my formatting is all mucked up and I looked at the Html, but I couldn't figure out how the fonts came out different. Oh well, looks like another issue to research, will add it to my bug tracker.

Chromatics Attack Word Cloud

2010-07-01T15:15:00.005-04:00

Here’s a word cloud of The Chromatics Attack. My three main characters figure prominently in this picture, wonder if that’s good or bad. I also seem to use looked, asked, thought, black, like, eyes, get, one, world, back, mom, going, know, door, light and see too much, will have to make sure I pay attention to these in the next revision.

Link Mash

2010-05-16T20:36:00.001-04:00

I thought I might start my own Link Mash Fridays with links to things I’ve found interesting or helpful.

Why Mash?

Well, I was looking for a good word to use to combine my computer geekyness with my writerly research, so I was going to call this post a link mashup. But I thought the word Mashup was overused and I like the word Mash better, because I love mashed potatoes.

Here’s a list of things I’ve run across:

I’ve found a fun and useful way to create characters is to use a D&D Character Sheet. Yes, that’s Dungeon’s and Dragons, the role playing game.

Now you might think that these character sheets only work for fantasy writers, but you can easily change some of the attributes of these sheets to fit your genre of fiction.

The Myers-Briggs personality test. When I was working for Universal Studios, everyone in the IT department had to take the test in order for us to communicate better with each other. If you take the test for your characters, you can get an idea of how they’d react to certain situations. By the way, I’m an INTP. From Wikipedia: INTP types are quiet, thoughtful, analytical individuals who tend to spend long periods of time on their own, working through problems and forming solutions. Sounds just like me.

Here’s a Writer Action Verb List, found it handy when I need a better verb. Print it out and hang it up near your workspace.

Need to know the word-count of your favorite published books? Go to AR Bookfinder and search for book by title or author.

Finally, if you are having trouble with plot, try the standard Hero's Journey plot. Hero ventures out of his known territory, often unwilingly, to unknown regions and mahem errupts around him. If you use it, or have used it, tell me how it worked out.

Oh, and if you care to share your Myers-Briggs personality types, I'd love to know!

That’s it for now.

TTL
KFran

Techniques of the Selling Writer

2010-05-09T16:37:00.008-04:00

I just read a great book called Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain. It's an old book, first copyright 1965, but I still found some gems of wisdom in it. The title is a little misleading, it doesn't actually tell you how to sell your writing, but it tells you how to write.

It boils writing down into scenes and sequences. In each scene the focal character has a goal and conflicts arise from this goal leading to disaster. After the scene, you write a sequence where the focal character reflects on the scene, understands what went wrong and decides how to make it right, his next goal. Each scene builds upon the previous becoming more and more disastrous. Each sequence sets the focal character's goal higher and higher.

He also explains motivational reaction. He calls it a 'motivation-reaction unit.' It goes something like this: first you have a motivational stimulus then your character reacts to it with feeling, action and speak in that order. You cannot have your characters speak without understanding the motivational stimulus that made them speak and their previous feeling and actions towards the stimulus. That is why, IMHO, you can never open your novel with dialogue.

Mr. Swain goes on to suggest that there are five elements in every piece of commercial fiction. They are Character, Situation, Objective, Opponent, Disaster. I think this is exactly what you want in your query letter. Your character is in a situation where his objective is blocked by an opponent leading to a disaster. He goes on to suggest that you can summarize your novel in two sentences. The first is written as a statement where you incorporate the first three elements, character, situation and objective. The second sentence is written as a question incorporating the opponent and disaster.

I'm going to try to use these ideas in my next rewrite and query. There are many more nuggets of wisdom in this book, and I guess that's why it's still for sale on Amazon, so I suggest you go get it now!

Cheers
KFran

Mind Mapping Alice in Wonderland

2010-05-06T21:47:00.006-04:00

I decided to look into some Project Gutenberg books and thought it'd be fun to do another mindmap. This time of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, which happens to be the #1 downloaded book on the site today. I'm thinking that maybe it's because of the Tim Burton, Johnny Depp movie.

I did a mindmap of Twilight some months ago using the FREE tool called Freemind. It's a great tool for brainstorming writing sessions. Last time I did the first 20 pages of Twilight, but Lewis Carroll writes in such rich detail, that this mindmap is only from the first four or five pages, love it!

The first shot is of the overall mindmap, so it's going to be kinda hard to read. It's all about Alice broken into seven micro scenes, sitting by the bank, rabbit ran by, starting to her feet, ran after the rabbit, in the hole, fell down the well and thump thump. You can see the mindmap here:

This detail provides more details of the first four micro scenes, how she feels when she's sitting by the bank and what happens when the rabbit runs bye.

And finally we see the detail of when she falls in the well and what she sees:

Anyway, hope you enjoy my interpretation of Alice in Wonderland (ok, real title Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but that's too long to type.) I'm off to finish reading the book!

PS, I plan to mindmap WINGS by Aprilynne Pike next in celebration of her releasing the second book in the series, called SPELLS. Stay tuned!

PPS, Maybe I should map something I've written too, but for now I'm too shy!

ttl

KFran

Kindle Best Seller List

2010-04-26T20:16:00.001-04:00

I decided to analyze the top 100 bestselling Kindle books on Amazon to determine if I could see any patterns. I took the list of books and zapped it into a calc spreadsheet. Calc is equivalent to excel for those of you who don’t use Open Office, and if you still pay for Microsoft Products, I will be doing a whole separate post on that.

Anyway, this is what I found out:

Free Books

66 out of 100 books are free (cost: $0.00) That’s a huge percentage in my opinion and must be further understood. So, to break it down even further:

31 are Public Domain books
7 are from Zondervan
4 are from Steeple Hill
4 are from Harlequin
4 are from Harpercollins
3 are from Silhouette
3 are from LucasBooks
10 are from miscellaneous publishers (Rivell, RiverOak, Samhain, etc.)

Average Cost Per Book

The cost per book averaged out to be $3.36 if you include the free books
The cost per book averaged out to be $9.60 if you don’t include free books
16 books are priced at $9.99
10 books are under $9.99 ($6.18 average)
7 books are over $9.99 ($13.78 average)

Bestsellers on Amazon Regular vs. Kindle Lists

Comparing the regular bestseller list to the kindle, I only found 8 books on both. The only two books that are doing better on Kindle are Caught and Eclipse.

The books common to both lists are:

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2 vs. 2) Kindle Price: $5.50
The Girl who Played with Fire (5 vs. 15) Kindle Price: $7.99
The Help (7 vs. 23) Kindle Price: $9.99
Double Comfort Safari Club (23 vs. 100) Kindle Price: $9.99
Caught (28 vs. 9) Kindle Price: $8.99
Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang (35 vs. 93) Kindle Price: $12.00
Little Bee (42 vs. 98) Kindle Price: $9.99
Eclipse (74 vs. 41) Kindle Price: $9.99

Other Observations

* The list changes hourly, and some books would jump 5-8 spots within an hour. This leads me to believe that all these books are very close together in regards to sales.
* Jane Austen is very popular with six out of the 100 books being hers.
* I can’t figure out what it all means, but I do think that giving away books for free increases sales, but is not practical.
* I checked out all the publishers and there were no self published authors on the list.

I do think that lower prices would bring more sales to kindle books. What do you think?

kfran

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

2010-04-22T20:07:00.000-04:00

Book Review Time: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I wonder how Suzanne Collins came up with this idea. Did she read the short story by Shirley Jackson called The Lottery written in 1948? Yes, 1948! Did she see the movie Series 7: The Contenders starring my ex roommate? Did she come up with the idea on her own? Doubt it. Does it matter? Not. At. All.

I actually cheated and read the end because I was worried about who would survive, but then I went back and read every word of every chapter because I was enthralled. Even though I knew the plot (go back to the ex-roomie’s movie) I still felt she portrayed the story with vigor and originality. I appreciated the fact that this book wasn’t too violent or romantic. The description of the violence was brief, leaving it up to the reader to form the ideas in her head. The barely there romance felt genuine, not overdone and certainly not the focus of the book.

We have the requisite love triangle between Kat, Peeta and Gale. Even though Gale appears only briefly at the beginning, we are drawn to him and their relationship immediately. I did feel Peeta was a bit of a push over, worshipping her since she was five, I hope he gains a bit of emotional strength in the next book. I felt Kat didn’t realize she was falling for Peeta, did a good job of misunderstanding her emotions. In the end, she couldn’t let go of him, but we assume it’s because he’s been her rock through the gruesome situation in the arena. Maybe there’s something more, maybe. Personally, I can’t wait to find out.

I didn’t buy the change of the rules scenario where two could survive and then changing the rules at the end. Honestly, I don’t think Kat would not have killed Peeta and he certainly wouldn’t kill her. IMHO the author didn’t need this twist. This reinforces my notion that what drew me into the book was the characters, not the plot. I’m so interested in finding out more about them and I can’t wait to read the sequel.

Oh, and just two nitpicks: I think they could’ve come up with a better cover, boring and ugly. I only wish the sequel was on Kindle, because my love affair with the Kindle is not over yet!

TTL
KFRAN

What I learned from Scientific American

2010-04-07T08:39:00.008-04:00

Here's some writing ideas from Scientific American. I'm sure there's a story in each one of these tidbits.

A long, long time ago it was estimated that there were only 55,000 humans on the planet – including Homo Erectus, Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. Apparently scientists at the University of Utah figured this out by studying mutations in DNA.
Animals on Madagascar are really cute.
E. coli, the same thing that causes food poisoning, may someday be used as Biofuel. Scientists genetically engineered E Coli to eat sugar and excrete biodiesel. Checkout the Keasling Lab for more information.
Sleep deprivation causes people to think that someone is with them even though they are alone, especially solo athletes like mountain climbers or sailors. People think these are guardian angels. Book recommendation: The Third Man Factor
Our brain is like a giant circuit system and faulty wiring causes many mental illnesses. Depression is caused by a defective hub in a tiny area of the brain called Area 25. Area 25 really excites brain scientists.
Planet Fail: Basically consumerism is causing our planet to fail. We are shopping ourselves to death. Local economic growth is more important than global economic growth. This is a really interesting article with good story ideas, too much info to summarize, buy the mag to find out more.

TTL
KFran

Editorial Ass Contest!!!

2010-03-30T19:11:00.004-04:00

One of my favorite blogs, Editorial Ass is having a contest. Check it out if you want your first twenty pages critiqued by a world class editor named Moon Rat.

Go for it HERE!!

ttl
KFran

Word of the Day: Gaylord

2010-03-21T20:12:00.003-04:00

When I grew up in Chicago, there was a street gang called the Gaylords. Now, I come to find out that Gaylord is actually a term used in publishing. Apparently, it's a thick cardboard box that contains books "hurt for resale" or returned books.

A book returned is considered "hurt and thrown into the Gaylord."

See the article here.

I know how the street gang came up with their name, wonder how publishing did?

-KFran

Three Girls Named Lauren

2010-03-20T22:41:00.006-04:00

What kind of strange coincidence is it when three girls named Lauren all end up on the New York Times Best Seller List in order. I didn't think it was that common of a name, must be something else going on here...

5. SWEET LITTLE LIES, by Lauren Conrad
6. FALLEN by Lauren Kate
7. BEFORE I FALL by Lauren Oliver

And did you notice how all the Lauren's have last names that are also first names too? Conrad Kate and Oliver. Not to mention two of the titles have something to do with falling. I'm not sure what this means, but I'm sure it means something.

Thoughts?

KFran

I'm a Certified ScrumMaster

2010-03-16T21:36:00.006-04:00

It’s official, I’m a Certified ScrumMaster. I just love the way that sounds, although I’m not sure what the Master part means. I think it means I’m a master of the Scrum philosophy which means I’m no longer a project manager, but an impediment remover.

For those of you not in-the-know, Scrum is an iterative incremental framework for Agile software development. Exciting stuff, isn’t it! And since this blog focuses on writing, I’d like to focus this post on how to apply the Scrum framework to writing. Here is how I think it would work.

In Scrum, you have an artifact called the Product Backlog which is a prioritized list of required features in your product. A product could easily be a book and your required features could easily be elements in your book, chapters, scenes, etc. Coincidentally in Scrum, a required feature is called a story so it fits in very nicely to this model.

Once you have your Product Backlog, you determine what you can do in a sprint and you commit to it. A sprint is a time box of two to four weeks. The whole point of Scrum and Agile is to keep short release cycles. For instance, the writer could time box the first and second chapters into two weeks and commit to doing this. At the end of the sprint, the writer would have a retrospective in which they would determine what they could do better in the next sprint. Then they would start all over again.

Another key artifact in Scrum is the Scrum Board. This is a board that contains all of your sprint stories in various states of completion. So, if you have a story called “Sam digs a hole” then in the beginning of your sprint it starts out on the TO DO section of the board. When you start writing the scene, you move it to the DOING section of the board and when you complete the scene, you move it to the DONE section.

And lastly I’d like to recommend a tool to look at called Mingle. To install it, you need to be a bit of a geek because you’ll need your own database setup first like MySQL or something. But, it’s a great tool to create and move stories around and I think it's free to the individual user.

That’s all for now.

Kfran

I Love my Kindle, I Hate my Kindle

2010-03-04T20:27:00.002-05:00

So my mother bought me a kindle for my birthday, wasn’t going to buy one myself, and I’ve had it about a month now. What really surprised me is that the screen is very easy to read. Somehow I missed all the reviews that said they are using a new technology that is completely different from any other computer screen I’ve ever seen. Simply, it’s not a computer screen at all. It’s more like a piece of paper.

It made me think I’ve been too hard on the Kindle, too angry at it for trying to replace my beloved books, so I decided to embrace it. What follows here is a list of all the positive things I can say about my Kindle:

1. It’s easy to read – easy on the eyes.

2. It’s super light weight, important when you’re reading a book like Anna Karenina. Your wrists don’t get tired holding it up.

3. There’s not a huge book binding. Think Anna Karenina again, impossible to fold over. This is important to me because I like to lay on my side to read, and holding a thick book can be a challenge. I can hold my Kindle in one hand and it doesn’t break the wrist (see #2)

4. I can store like a gammmillion books in it. I’ve only downloaded a few so far, but I see the potential at having many books at my fingertips while I lay in bed to read. No more getting out from under the warm covers to go look for another book to read.

5. I can download all of the classics (and anything found on Project Gutenberg) for free. Yes, FREE! Wahoo. If I wanted to, I could read thousands and thousands of books for free.

6. Makes travel reading effortless. Just download the books you want to read while you are on vacation, on the plane, on the bus, and whip out your Kindle when you are ready to read them.

So now that I’ve gushed about it, there are some drawbacks too. And here they are:

1. The button you click to turn the page is about two inches higher than I would like it. I have to move my thumb up from its holding place to turn a page. I’d like to be able to keep my thumb in the same place, on the page turning trigger.

2. The chapters aren’t named in the table of contents. I’m reading The Help right now and the book has chapter headings, but the Kindle TOC does not list them. So, if I want to jump to a particular chapter by name, I can't.

3. Skimming the book is impossible. You can click, click, click through the pages, but I wish this process was faster somehow. Besides, I have to move my thumb to do it (see #2)

4. It’s not a book. This is still a big issue with me. No beautiful cover art and nothing to put on my bookshelf. I know there is a great debate on pricing of ebooks, and if they get closer to the book-book price, I will not buy them as much. I’m sure. Maybe. Well. If it is a very pretty book, I’d buy the hard copy, or maybe I’d buy both!

5. The power supply is plugged in at the bottom of the kindle, making it impossible to rest the kindle on anything while you are reading it.

There you have it.

KFran

The Art of Writing

2009-11-22T20:51:00.003-05:00

The Art of Writing

I thought it would be fun to blog about how I write – especially when I get to a scene I can’t visualize and might need help conceptualizing the characters, the mood, the scenery.

I have several different ways to get out of this writers block, and one of my favorites is looking at artwork and photography to grasp the immediacy of the scene I am trying to create. I do this many times during the writing process, from conception to rough draft to polishing.

In creating the original framework of the novel, my ideas swarm in my head. I try to get lots of pictures together to help constructing them. So I tackle magazines, the internet, take pictures of objects and put them together in some sort of collage that helps me get ideas.

Here are some images that help me create...

This one is great for so many reasons. The snow, the trees, the isolation. You wonder who is out there wandering around in all the loneliness. The lack of color and the contrast between black and white also add to the mood. The twisted tree is the finishing touch. Was there a storm, did a giant bend it over, is it pointing in the direction of a secret? So many possibilities. You might not notice this, but there is a compost heap underneath the tree. Why is it there, does that mean there's a house near bye, or a hunter? Someone who dwells outside? This picture can conjure up so many ideas.

This one is great for POV. Who is looking out the window, what do they see? We see a tree, a fenced in yard, neighbors, snow. Are they looking for someone, something? The details are numerous here too... The child's toy covered in snow, left out. The neighbor's truck, a road barely traveled, the giant oak tree. Again, the colors and the lighting could really set the mood of the MC. If I were a mom waiting for her child to come home from borrowing the family car, this scene might make me nervous, worried about his safety. If I were a teenager looking out the window, I might feel isolated and angry. If I were a child, I might feel pure joy, wishing I was out there playing in so much snow.

This one, courtesy of teh Museum of Modern Art, New York is Van Gogh's Starry Night. I'm not even going to try to describe this one. I really want to know what's going on in that sky though, are we even on our planet?

I'd love to hear some interpretations from anyone out there who might be stopping bye. What do you guys think?

KFran.

North Carolina Imposes Amazon Tax

2009-11-12T19:48:00.002-05:00

I live in NC and used the Amazon Affiliate program to promote their books on my site. Amazon closed my account because I live in NC and they don't want to do business with the state any more. Basically NC thinks it's loosing 17 million in revenue from click-through advertising, and Amazon refuses to charge their Affiliate users (me) 4.5% income tax to give it to North Carolina.

North Carolina wants Amazon to charge their affilliates who live in NC 4.5% of their sales, which they think will equal 17 million. That would mean that NC thinks it residents make roughly 375 million dollars a year in click-throughs -- if I'm doing the math correctly. If that much money was going through the state of North Carolina a year in click-through revenue, this state would be RICH. So basically NC scared Amazon away and the only one that suffers is ME!

What were they thinking?

silly

What I learned from Scientific American Mind

2009-11-11T20:16:00.001-05:00

So I just received my first issue of Scientific American Mind, and came away with so many nuggets of joy, I thought I'd summarize what I learned here. If you want to pick up your own copy, you can find it here. In no particular order, here's what I learned from this issue:

SciAm has cruises to the Caribbean and New England that "refresh your science spirit" - ok, I've seen the adverts before, but I think this is a wonderful idea. Cruise with Scientists. Sign me up.
Insomniacs are hungrier than sleepy pies and night owls are alert and productive longer than early birds. -- totally agree. Hubby can work for 23 hours a day, me about 10. And he's always hungry.
Ex patriots are more creative -- this supports my wish to move to Paris!
If your kid smiles a lot, they are less likely to get divorced when they are older. -- hubby and i are in trouble, neither one of us smiled much as kids...ten years and counting...
Botox injections make you happier -- off to the dermatologist I go.
Pot smoking (you know, marijuana) makes you dumber when you are young, but smarter when you are older --- hmmm.
Survival of the fittest has been replaced by survival of the kindest -- this was my favorite nugget. Be kind to each other and you will survive! Be mean to each other and you will be toast!
Some scientist out there is dumping goldfish into hot water to see if they experience pain -- ouch. I can only think that he needs to learn to be a little kinder (not the goldfish) Seriously!

That's all for now
Peace Out

Kfran

What is Voice?

2009-11-05T20:36:00.011-05:00

I decided it would be fun to compare styles of books I've read and enjoyed. This blog is turning out to be a learning tool for me as much as entertainment for anyone else that might be reading it (is there anyone out there?!). Voice is one thing that's hard to master, but makes novels stand out as unique and original.

I'm going to start with two books that deal with adolescent death in different ways. They both could be considered problem – books but I think they are much more than that – Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson and Th1rteen R3asons Why by Jay Asher. These books are AWESOME studies of teen angst, so if you haven't read them you really should! What makes them even more unique and special is the way the author portrays the protagonist and the dead girl.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

This novel is about Lia, whose friend Cassie has just died in a hotel room. Lia is anorexic and Cassie was bulimic. But, this is sooo NOT an eating disorder story. I could almost pick out any sentence in this book and leave it as an example of quality writing because it is that good. Each sentence is a nugget of Lia's brain left out for us to examine. And this brain is messed up. I have never read a book where I've felt so inside of someone's head before.

The most effective way this author did this was through her use of numbers and playing with punctuation. You really feel Lia's obsession with numbers, from her calorie counting (ie: carrots 25 cal), to her weight (ie: 101 lbs), to the way the chapters were numbered (chapter 00.01, chapter 00.02, etc) Everything written felt like a part of Lia's life.

Numbers, especially the process of adding numbers, plays a part with Lia's every day thoughts. Dr. Marrigan is her mom, never referred to as Mom. Even when her dad says “talk” Lia transforms it into a formula.

When Cassie died, she called Lia 33 times, which the author uses as a literary device throughout the book. She counts out 33 numbers to show us the effect on Lia's head and the state of Cassie before she died.

Th1rteen R3asons Why by Jay Asher

The protagonist's name is Clay – he has just received a set of tapes from the dead girl – Hannah – about why she killed herself. This author found an original way to portray two voices – with the set of tapes the recorded voice of the dead girl. He chose to intersperse Clay's voice with Hannah's in each chapter, as opposed to keeping inside of one characters head per chapter. He handled the switches so well that I was never confused, and it added a completely different element to the story – one I have not seen before.

The author has an innate ability to flip between the two voices in the story. Hannah's voice is always in italics. There are even scenes where Clay is talking to other people, and has headphones on so we still get to hear the dead girl's voice – achieving total creepiness.

Peace Out
KFran

Wings by Aprilynne Pike

2009-10-05T20:12:00.001-04:00

So, I’ve been following this blog written by a debut author for a couple of months – seriously it’s a great blog, you need to check it out. Her book Wings has been doing amazingly well and I thought I’d post a little review of it.

The story of the publication of Wings is every author’s dream. Rejected by a bunch of agents, her book is finally discovered by the right one and made its debut on the flipping New York Times best seller list. It’s been sitting there for ten weeks. Every time I read her blog, she’s got some breaking news that’s almost surreal. Like Miley Cyrus is going to star in the film. No kidding.

I’m going to focus my review on what I learned about writing from reading a NYT best selling author. I think its important to learn about what makes a good book great and I'm trying really hard to figure that out.

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

The big debate – whether one should write in first person or third person – is answered by Wings. It doesn’t matter. You can be just as intimate in a third person narrative, as you can in first person. Wings is written in third person, but does a great job of capturing the essence of the MC with inner monologue. You don’t need to write in first person for the reader to feel like they know your MC.

This is a faerie story with an unexpected twist. I’m assuming a book called Wings will be about a girl who turns into a faerie and flies away on her wings…Wrongo! The way the author twisted my idea of a faerie and made it totatlly different and it worked great. I was surprised by the blossom growing out of her back and the fact that she was a plant! I thought it was an original idea – and one that can be developed into so much more in the sequels… looking forward to it!

The concentration of characterization vs. having so much in the story that I completely loose track of what’s going on and too many magic distractions that I loose track of the underlying themes. Does that make sense? Like she doesn’t all-of-a-sudden start shooting fire out of her eyes and lifting cars with her pinky finger. It’s a very grounded story that happens to have a bit of magic wrapped around it.

I would've loved to see some chapter titles. Seriously, I love skimming down the chapter titles in a book before I read it. Hopefully, the next book will have some. There's definitely some interesting coming of age stuff here too. Like the way they procreate. You have to read the book to understand what I mean, but having a kid when you’re a plant is just a little different.

The blossom as a metaphor for puberty…if I’m right? She turns fifteen, doesn’t get her period, gets her blossom instead. It's an interesting concept. I can’t wait to read the next volume in the sequel -- must find out what happens. I’m team Tam, for sure. For the record, I don’t think it’s as much like the Twilight Series as it is like Tithe by Holly Black. I loved both, so either comparison is great in my mind.

Cheers
Karen

A Washcloth + A VHS Box + Juice Pitcher = Huh?

2009-10-04T21:28:00.001-04:00

So if you are a parent, you know kids can be silly, creative, imaginative and just downright amazing. My four year old twins love to make up their own games. Today, the oldest (older by 1 minute) took all the washcloths from the bathroom – about ten of them. Then he found a beaten up VHS tape cover – Beauty and the Beast -- and proceeded to make a machine.

HOT TIP: We buy loads of VHS tapes at garage sales for $1.00 a piece. Especially Disney. The kids watch these things over and over again, so it’s been worth it. If you have kids, snap them up, and buy a VCR at WalMart – they’re cheep and make great play toys after the kids are done watching them.

Anyway, this is really about how B made a washcloth folding machines. If you would like to follow his instructions, here they are:

1. Take a VHS tape box
2. Open it and place it on the ground
3. Take a washcloth and place it on top of the box – fits perfectly!
4. Now close the box. Voila! You have a washcloth folded in half.
5. It’s not so simple.
6. Now – pick the washcloth up again and unfold it.
7. Place it on the ground and roll it up into a sausage
8. Place rolled up washcloth in the pitcher

You now have the perfect rolled up washcloth juice – yummy!This might not sound exciting to you, but my boy played this game for a good hour last night, didn’t want to go to bed, and got up early the next morning to start again. The washcloths went on to become hotdogs, catsup, mustard, depending on what color they were.

-Karen Carr
(Mother)

Who Squished my Squash????

2009-09-10T13:24:00.001-04:00

Who knew that you can over-water squash? I was thinking that it's been over 90 degrees here for weeks, so I need to water my plants every morning, right? Yea, it's been raining, but they still looked a little droopy, so I kept watering.

Apparently squash plants aren't used to being watered so much, and so they mildewed, wilted and died. I had to toss out about eight vines. I don't really care, because they were dominating the garden. These things are huge. And now my tomatoes have more room to grow.

I'll get better next year, after all this is only my third year.... :) -- Oh, and I used to think these were my pumpkin plants, so I've learned that much at least. Right? I mean these look like squash to you, don't they?

Double Harumph.

Karen Carr

West Virginia, I Love You

2009-09-03T14:50:00.003-04:00

Back from the rosy little vacation. What was supposed to be a fun vacation in Chicago – where my little kiddies were supposed to meet their great grandma for the first time – turned into an adventure on the side of a mountain in West Virginia.

So, what happened?

Well…my lovely and super zippy and brand new Mazda CX7 (ok, ten months old) blew a compressor so the air conditioner stopped working as we were winding our way through the West Virginia mountainside. Hubby and I pulled over and everything looked ok, so we decided to go on with no A/C. Sure, it would be a sticky ride, but seeing great grandma was more important (and seeing grandma and nana and sista)

It turns out that once your compressor goes out on your Mazda CX7 – so will your BELT. Had I thoroughly read the information that I Googled on my iPhone, I would have known that this common for this model and the result was disastrous. Basically our whole entire car filled up with white smoke while we were rounding a bend, and we had to pull over in the middle of the highway. We had to wait on the side of the road with our boys -- one bawling his eyes out, the other trying to run down the highway -- in the dark. One side, screaming traffic, the other side a steep drop – didn’t really know how steep…gives me the creeps to think about even now.

Of course my story has a happy ending. We were stranded in a lovely hotel for a week without a car, but it had a swimming pool and my kids were happy. West Virginia is amazing, beautiful, lush, cool and we had a very relaxing vacation…no driving at all. Car was fixed and we drove back home. Of course Grandma, Nana and Great Grandma were heartbroken and Mazda has not apologized for almost wiping out my family.

Zoom Zoom.

PS, thank you for all of those who helped us in West Virgina -- and in Virginia, because for some reason they towed our car over there... Bless You!

!!!

Road Trip to Chicago

2009-09-01T12:31:00.001-04:00

We're getting ready to drive to Chicago from NC to visit the grandparents. Will be staying in Charleston West Virginia and Louisville Kentucky. Never been to either place, so we're very excited. Haven't been to Chicago in ten years, kids have never been there. If the conversation in the car goes anything like the last one with the kids (they're four mind you) and their dad, it will be very amusing. Here's a snipit:

Dad: Hey look, a deer!

Son1: Wow, pretty. Let's kill it.

Son2: Yea, and then we can eat it!

Ok, we're surrounded by hunters out here in the country, so I guess I understand. But I'm a city girl, always got my meat at the supermarket, and I like it ground up, you know not resembling any kind of previous life.

So, I better make a list of things to bring, since I'm the only one reading this blog anyway, it seems like a good place to keep my list:

1. Clothes - duh.
2. Bathing suits for those hotel pools.
3. Lots of books to read in the car (for the kids) and in the hotel room (for me)
4. Digital Camera (for Son1 - he's a great photographer, will post some pics later)
5. Pinky (my Lenovo ideapad)
6. Cooler and snacks

Also, the house won't be empty, so don't get any ideas. Our hunting neighbors with lots of guns will be staying there and watching it very closely. They like us.

Here's my book list:

1. Thirteen Reasons Why
2. Hershey Herself
3. Wintergirls
4. Suicide Notes

Before you get any ideas about the state of my health, I'm researching suicide because the MC in my newest attempt at a novel almost does just that. It's not a suicide story as much as a foreclosure story ...

Happy
Karen

It's a Garden Day

2009-08-05T12:35:00.001-04:00

Today we take a little break and see how the family garden is doing. Seems that the boys are working hard. According to this picture, their sand toys, dump trucks and blankets are all needed for the process. This year we're growing a bunch of different tomato varieties as well as pumpkin, watermelon, squash, cucumber, corn and mustard seed along with miscellaneous unknowns. It's fun to see it grow, biggest one we've had yet. The goal is to start growing heirloom tomatoes to sell at the local farmer’s market in a few years.

We also have a bunch of fruit trees, plums, apples, pears, cherries and quinces. They aren't doing so well because of an invasion of Japanese Beetles. They love plum leaves. If you're a gardener, you know how hard these things are to eliminate. Every day I catch a bunch in a plastic water bottle. In August we're going to try the Milky Spores, they're supposed to eat the grubs that will turn into more Japanese Beetles next year. Totally into organic pest control here. We had the catapillar invasion last year, but we haven't seen any of those at all. Go figure.

-Karen Carr

Where to start?

2009-08-01T21:23:00.001-04:00

What made me think I could write a novel with two kids, a hubbie and a full time job? Dunno, but somehow I’ve managed to *almost* complete a middle grade fantasy and I thought it’d be fun to talk about it here. Starting out with kids lit seemed like a good idea. I had kids, the books are only 40-60k average, I can pull that off! I’m not one of those writers who can gush out a storm, you know -- write 140k words in a matter of months. I write outlines and then try to fill them in with meaningful stuff like exposition and dialogue.

For work I write these really boring, dull, dry business system requirements for software – wow! Oh yea. Ever wonder how many IT professionals are wannabe writers like me? This is not a joke. There are lots. So I started writing this book called The Shadow’s Map about – let me see… almost a year ago now. Several breaks of a couple of months each, it’s probably been five solid months (well, in between the work, kid, wife things) of writing.

Now I have an almost 50k novel almost finished. I like lists so I’m going to try to attempt to list out my day to see how exciting it really is. I also think lists will help to break up this really long monologue that might put you to sleep. If you want a use-case diagram, you'll have to ask me about that later.

Here we go:

1. Get up 7:00am
2. Drive through the countryside, see maybe four other cars (yay – no traffic!)
3. Arrive at Work 8:00am
4. Work - Work - Work until 4:00pm – that’s IT stuff, no writing!
5. Cook dinner, weed the garden, kill bugs, play with kiddies until 8:00pm
6. Write – Write – Write until midnight
7. Repeat as needed

I’m super great at multi-tasking so that 8:00p to Midnight writing window usually entails watching a movie, chatting to hubby, balancing kid on lap all at my computer desk. See, I don’t need quiet to write. I need lots of distractions. Internet is fabulous. So that’s generally how my day goes and I think that’s enough for my first post. I’m really just trying out this blogging thing. We’ll see how it goes… PS, why is blogging not in spell check?

Bother!

-Karen Carr
(Writer)