K.T. Ivanrest's Blog, page 3
October 8, 2016
Snippet Saturday — Threshold
Happy Saturday, everyone! We are celebrating the awesome fall weather by making seasoned-salted pumpkin seeds and pecan pumpkin cake, and drinking pumpkin spice lattes (well, my sister is — I’m a salted caramel mocha person). In case you need something to read while you sip your own PSL (or SCM, or CM, or YMCA…) have a snippet from my Sirens story, Threshold, where Navrin’s coming-of-age ceremony is about to go badly awry. (Heh heh heh. Er, that is, poor guy.)
(Apologies for the block-quote f...
September 8, 2016
1K for 1K
Confession time! I don’t know how you writers do those 10K1Day things.
The most I’ve ever written in a day was about 5.5K, and that was during NaNo on Mid-Month Write-A-Thon Day. It felt GREAT, but I can’t imagine cranking out twice that many words in a day and preserving (what little remains of) my sanity.
Second confession time! I’m lazy.
I used to be better about working out, especially when I lived alone and there was no one around to hear my workout playlist (Kpop, basically. WOW, FANTAS...
August 30, 2016
A Quick and Dirty Guide to Writing Epic Secret Agent Characters
Does this sound familiar? The new Jason Bourne movie just came out. Some TV channel I don’t get because we only get 10 channels is playing all of the other Bourne movies to get you in the mood. You’re sitting on the couch with your laptop in your lap (because you can totally write your novel and watch a movie at the same time) and the thought strikes: I want to write a secret agent novel! I want to be the next Richard Castle!
[image error]
…you’re right, he’s fictional. Okay, I want to be the next James...
July 23, 2016
Four (and a half) Things I Learned Writing Threshold
Hey everyone! As part of the Sirens launch, editor Rhonda Parrish organized a blog tour incorporating posts from the contributors. This is the post I wrote, which originally appeared on her blog on Tuesday (7/19).
Disclaimer: While some of these are things I discovered about myself as a writer, others are advice straight out of Writing 101. I’m sharing them anyway because they were “Oh!” moments, when knowing something in the abstract beca...
July 7, 2016
News news news!
Guys, my contributor copy of Sirens arrived yesterday!!!
[image error]
There’s a story in it with my name on it!!!
[image error]
I’m going to a writers’ retreat/workshop in Ireland for a week and I’m leaving in *checks watch* 2.5 hours!!!
[image error]Dunseverick, Northern Ireland. Via Pixabay
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!
[image error]
Editor’s note: Kate promises to be more coherent, and thorough, when she returns from her retreat. Maybe.
June 30, 2016
WIP Joy
Well, #WIPJoy is wrapping up today on Twitter, so that means it’s time for a compendium!
For those unfamiliar, WIPJoy is a Twitter series hosted by @simmeringmind; each day writers answer a question about their work-in-progress using the hashtag #WIPJoy. Here are this month’s questions:
[image error]
I’d not participated before because I was still working out the details of my WIP. This time, though, I’d done enough novel writing that I felt like I could answer most of the questions. And here they are:
Da...
June 20, 2016
Monday Reminder: Success and the End Goal
I was all set to write a writing-related Reminder for today, but a conversation with a friend yesterday got me thinking, and I decided some of those thoughts were worth sharing here. To start us off, here’s today’s Reminder in a nutshell:
[image error]
I realized yesterday that I rarely stop to congratulate myself on my accomplishments; still less often do I actually reward myself for them.
I finished a PhD program in August after 6.5 years. Grad school sucks every bit as much as they say it does, but I...
May 31, 2016
Five Writing Lessons from A Darker Shade of Magic
There’s a lot of debate about whether authors should write book reviews, particularly when we have less-than-glowing things to say. I can see both sides of the argument (check out Cristina R. Guarino’s take on some of the pros and cons, for instance), and to be honest, my jury’s still out on this one.
But! I do want to be able to talk about books I’ve read, so rather than write outright reviews, I thought I would follow the example of other writer-bloggers and instead share some of the writin...
May 9, 2016
Just a reminder…
Hello readers!
Today I am excited to announce my first blog series, to be called…
[image error]
…the Monday Reminder. (Oooooooh, aaaaah!)
For this series, I’ll be asking you to send me your to-do lists, then posting them here on Mondays so you’ll be reminded of all the things you have to do whenever you visit the blog.
…ooooor maybe not.
What I’m actually going to be writing about starts with the story of my very limited experience with writers’ conferences.
Now, when I say “very limited”, I mean I’ve...
