Kathy L. Salt's Blog, page 4

Autumn update

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We are now almost halfway through October! I’m having a hard time realizing and accepting that the year is drawing to a close. In one way I’m very grateful since 2019 started in a very bad way for me and usually I love December and January and I want experience them again without being on heavy medicine. But more on that at another time.

I wanted to give a bit of an update. When the term started I made a post on how I was going to manage to stay active as an author and blogger even while working as a teacher. I always fail at that but this term I wanted to manage. I want to be an author all year around and not just during June, July and August.

Now I haven’t been as active on here and other social media as I wanted but since writing that post I have been asked by my boss to take additional classes at university on teaching Swedish as a Second Language to help children who are new to Sweden. This is a mission and an opportunity I’m very grateful for since it also adds to my responsibility as a teacher. HOWEVER that gives me less time and energy for author stuff. Even now I should be studying and instead I’m writing this post.

Anyway….

“I Love You Nora Whispered” is in beta reading and I’m writing character representations that I’m posting here. So keep an eye out for that.
I was supposed to start the first installment in my zombie series but instead I kind of started a contemporary romance novel about an author and a teacher (yeah, yeah, I know). That’s all I’m going to say about that now.
I want to write some short stories (under 5000 words) to publish on my blog that you can read for free but we will see how much energy I have later this month.
It’s almost November but I’m obviously not doing NaNoWriMo. I did manage once (although it was during my fanfiction days) but not since I started working. I am writing and that’s good enough for me.
We have moved into our new home now after living in temporary spaces since May. It’s such a relief.
I’m still continuing my ABC blog post series even though it might seem like I’m not. I’ve just had posts to write that didn’t fall into the proper letter.

I Love You Nora Whispered Character Presentation – Katherine

Author note: As a celebration of finishing my fifth novel I’m going to once a week for the next five weeks do presentations of characters from my newest novel “I Love You Nora Whispered”. It’s a story set in England during the 1940s.

First out is Katherine Waterhouse.

Katherine Waterhouse was the first character that popped into my head when planning this novel. Katherine was born 1923 to a British man called Simon Waterhouse and an Italian woman called Sandrine Waterhouse. Her older brother Leonard, lives far away and she thinks about him very seldom.

Katherine has a lot of anger and there is a discontentment in how she lives her life. At the age of 25 she still lives at home, unmarried, dreaming about the horses her father owns and trains. Her relationship with her parents is like a powder keg and even though Katherine doesn’t reflect a lot, I believe that some part of her knows that she can’t stay with her parents forever.

She doesn’t reflect on the fact that she isn’t interested in men or that she might be interested in women; she’s not interested in social interaction and dislikes people. All she cares about are horses and her dream of being the first female Olympian show jumper.

That is, until she meets Nora. 

When I was planning “I love you Nora whispered”, Katherine looked like the actress Sandrine Holt (see below) in my head just F.Y.I.

She looks a lot like her Italian mother but has her father’s height.

Tune in next week to meet Nora Lakes!

I thought I could, so I did

I wrote the outline for this post months ago. Then work happened and my creative energies turned to teaching. After dressing up as Moses and speaking in first person during a lesson about religion after fixing a conflict that happened during recess, it’s hard to go home and just turn on being a lesfic author.

However, I was happy for my diligent planning during the summer. I know what this post is about HOWEVER I have no idea on why, underneath the outline I wrote “I GOT HORNS”… just like that. In caps lock. What did I want to tell my future self? Was that suppose to be the beginning of this post? I have no idea.

In this post I want to talk about becoming an author and what that means, mentally and practically.

I have been writing my entire life and making up stories since before I could write. As a child I claimed that I was going to be an author and when I was 28 I was signed with a publisher and before that I had self-published “State of Emergency”.

I received six rejections on three different works at three different (or was it four?) publishers before finally being accepted with “Out of Hand”. During this time of rejection and sadness I read a blog post by a young author whom I’ve now sadly forgotten (otherwise I would have linked it).

She wrote about being an author and how being published is not the end. Rejections hurt but being published is almost worse because then you worry about sales and marketing and being approachable. And how it can take over your life.

At the time when I read it, I thought “pfft, at least she is published!” While receiving rejections in a niche market (lesfic isn’t exactly mainstream, you know) it’s easy to see publication as the end goal. I thought that if I could just get signed with a publisher, I wouldn’t have to worry anymore. I was so focused on that goal. I wanted the title “author” so desperately.

…oh if I knew. I regret nothing but oh… my… gosh. How right that author was; how right that author is.

I thought I could so I did it. I punched through the barrier and got to the other side. I’m working towards publishing my fifth novel and I’m immensely proud… and I also feel more lost than ever.

I suck at marketing. There, I said it. This is my biggest hurdle. I don’t feel I have the time and energy during the majority of the year due to day-job and during the summer I have the will, the time but not the boldness to insert myself in conversations online and tell people to go and read my books because they’re amazing and sexy and all that. I feel like I’m imposing or even… who do I think I am?

I guess I feel a bit like a fake. A lot of people in the lesfic community online (at least where I find myself) have been there a long time. They know the lingo. They know what’s proper and what’s not. And they dare. Whereas I’m so worried about doing a faux-pas that I’d rather stand silently in my corner holding a tiny arrow with an even tinier text saying “if you’re interested in lesfic books… etc etc.”

And lately I’ve gotten obsessed with the thought that my publisher will think I’m selling so badly that they won’t renew my contract in three years or so. (also if anyone knows that this wont happen, please tell me so I can stop worrying).

If I could start from the beginning and go back to being unpublished I’d grow my blog first. I wouldn’t have deleted my popular tumblr account and found readers from my following there. Instead I deleted everything and started from scratch. Why did I do that? That was stupid. I’d also research so much more. About running an author blog. About marketing.

My computer broke so I bought a new one. I wanted to be a teacher, so I became a teacher. I wanted to publish books so I did. Now what?

I honestly don’t know.

Some advice for people who are even more lost than me though: I have found that making a regular profile for my author-self has been very helpful not to mention fun. There are a lot of Facebook groups that discuss publishing, marketing and the like, both for the lesfic genre and other genres. These groups are amazing. Use them.

Happy Friday and thanks for reading!

 

 

Beta readers wanted

Hi everyone! 

I’m looking for serious beta-readers for my newest novel “I love you Nora whispered”. I’m looking for somebody serious, preferably with English as a first language. It’s a lesfic set in 1940s Britain and it’s about polio, horses and believing in oneself. It’s just over 70k words long. If you’re interested and have the time, send me a message!

Thanks!

On The Topic of Miss Walker’s disease

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 Ann Walker, wife of the famous Anne Lister, a brave person in her own right.

Everyone is always talking about how important representation is and what it means for groups of people. Of course it is good to read and learn about lives different than ours but it is very special to read, see, experience stories that has a character similar to us. Especially, it seems like, for marginalized groups. Just ask most book-loving lesbians how it felt to discover lesbian literature, but I digress.

I have loved the BBC/HBO series Gentleman Jack and I have talked about it before. In this post I want to focus on Miss Walker and what she means to me. Not just as a lesbian, but as a woman dealing with an illness. In this post I’m focusing on her as a character in the TV-series and not necessarily as a historical figure.

What do we know about Ann Walker’s illness?

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We know that she is weak. We know it’s something with her spine and we hear Eliza Priestley say that perhaps “it is a menstrual” issue. I know she is Mrs Priestley is saying it in a speculative way, in a cruel way but it has convinced me that Miss Walker has endometriosis. As a fellow endometriosis – haver, I claim her for my representation.

Endometriosis – and I’m talking from memory here – is when endometrial cells wind up sitting in the wrong place in a woman’s body. Usually they’re supposed to build up in the uterus and then be shed during that time of the month but when you have endometriosis these cells place themselves outside the uterus, in the fallopian tubes, around the bladder etc. This causes inflammation in the body. The symptoms can include nausea, fatigue, anxiety, terrible period pain, abdominal pain, pain, painful joints, painful sex, painful urination, weakness, pain, pain, pain… great right?

I’m on medication now and I don’t get most of these symptoms anymore but when I have a flare up, it makes it hard to walk, use my hands and my feet have a tendency to curl inwards which I’m trying to work on. The first symptom I had was in my knees and it took me about sixteen years to get a diagnosis because no doctor connected my “bad knees” with my cycle. Also, what 11 year old has bad knees? When puberty hit I started dislocating my knees and “getting stuck” as in I had them bent and couldn’t unbend them. As the years kept going, the pain went from my knees to include my whole body until I had most of the symtoms I list above. After the age of 25-26 I started having trouble walking, it felt like I was rusting on the inside, turning into a tin man. Even then it was hard to connect symtoms like painful joints to my cycle. At 28 I was told that I somehow have nerve damage in hips and arms. Just before 29 I found I have scar tissue in very strange places and a seeming inability get pregnant.

But back to Ann Walker

I tried desperately to find the gif of Mrs Priestley asking our dear Ann “how is the invalid” and Ann looking a bit embarrassed, the end of the gif is the one just above. You get so sick of being treated like an invalid. I really feel Miss Walker in that gif. It always sucks to not be able, especially when you’re young and seemingly capable and to go through life feeling absolutely pathetic. And it sucks to have an ailment, handicap, whatever, that is so invisible. What happens then is that you turn into a weak woman. And in a world of badass women like Miss Lister for Ann Walker or my wife for me, that’s not a nice feeling.

We don’t carry heavy boxes. We don’t wield a weapon or go to kick-boxing or head to the gym regularly. I can’t connect to the the non-stereotypical, tradition-breaking kickass women. I know that I was born damaged and I don’t mean that in a derogatory or even self-deprecating way. Most of the time I’m okay anyway, I’m used to being in pain and I learn every year to deal with it better and be thankful anyway. I like my life.

At least I have medicine, unlike poor Miss Walker. At least I live now and there is loads of help to get. And just like her I got a badass wife who loves me anyway and teases me and treats me like a normal person while occasionally driving me to (not in York though!) the doctor.

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The character of Miss Walker gave me representation I didn’t know I needed and I can’t wait for the second season.

If you’re still reading now and has stayed with me for this long, thanks for reading!

Review of Awakened by Fate

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“Awakened by Fate” is a novel that means a lot to its author, that much is clear whenever she mentions it. I had attempted to read this once but my work was very stressful at the moment so I put it on hold and read it during the summer when I had a better time focusing and I’m happy I did.

“Awakened by Fate” is about Jackie, a woman who is living somebody else’s life. In an unhappy but open marriage with a man, she gets by through flings with women and drinking too much. Her life is forever changed when she is in a car crash after a party. After that she is introduced to a spiritual lifestyle, a shift that she desperately needs. I sometimes had problems liking Jackie, I didn’t agree with some of her choices, especially choices made before the accident but I also think that’s why I liked her by the end. I had seen her grow and accepted, just like she had too, that she wasn’t perfect.

I actually also liked the annoying husband – Kyle – who I understand I was probably not supposed to like at all; but he was so human with his shifting of blame and hypocrisy. I liked how he was portrayed.

I probably wouldn’t have read this book if I hadn’t interacted with the author. The contents are different than what I usually choses but honestly? It was nice. I’ve never read a lesfic like it. It feels like a story of personal growth mixed in with non-fiction and self-help and I don’t mean it in a bad way. I recommend it to anyone who wants to read a lesfic that is about a person rather than about a couple. The story is about Jackie, there might be other people there, but she owns it. It’s her story and that I liked.

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“Awakened by Fate” is written by Lynn Lawler, a very nice woman who runs an amazing blog featuring lesfic reviews and interviews with authors. Even if you’re not interested in her book I implore you to check out her blog which you can find here. She puts a lot of energy and time into helping lesbian fiction grow and spread both on her blog and through different Facebook groups.

If you’re interested she has reviewed one of my novels plus interviewed me a few years ago.

Thanks for reading!

T is for Term is Starting

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As a teacher I’m incredibly spoiled. I stop working around the 20th of June and don’t start again until 14th of August. It feels like more than two months. Usually the summers feel like a whole life-time passes. It’s a time where I learn stuff, write a lot, play full-time author, go on trips, practice skills etc. The person that comes back to work in August is not the person that left in June.

HOWEVER and that is a big however, during the school year I am very tired and very busy. As I wrote in the post about my workplace, we teachers face certain conditions that are unacceptable. I love my job, believe you me, and I’m active not just in my own class but different groups and projects like a Swedish type of school board where we discuss the situation for our school in general. Last year the principal and I ran a project where we went into every single classroom in fourth, fifth and sixth grade where we taught the students about bullying on the internet. This is on top of teaching, assessing and planning for my own 24 third-graders. I love education and everything that comes with it but I also know that it eats a chunk of will to do other stuff – this includes being an author and running my blog.

This summer has been amazing. I made an author facebook that I’ve been using to connect with people in a more real way than I did before. Especially other authors and writers which has been so much fun. I’ve also done plenty of blog posts plus discovered how fun it is to make reviews of lesfic novels.

The bottom-line is, I don’t want to stop. I want to have my cookie and eat it too. I want to be able to be both a writer and a teacher in the same time, I don’t want to sacrifice one for the other because they are both equally important to me. They are. They are. They are.

So, like a teacher, I’ve made a plan and a schedule. If it doesn’t work out, fine, then it doesn’t, but I have to try. I made a paper schedule for what I’ll do on what days (the picture at the top) and I also roughly planned enough blog posts to take me through the rest of the year. I still did the bulk of my writing during the summer but I’m still not done with “I Love You, Nora Whispered”, I think and hope it’ll be done soon.

So here is to trying! To all of us whose vacations are ending. Let’s hope the year is kind to us.

Please check back in tomorrow for my review of “Awakened by Fate” by Lynn Lawler.

Review of Take Me Home by Ria M Apple

I don’t know about the rest of lesfic-reading people but I’m very bad at checking out new authors, which sucks because I’m a writer myself. I tend to find a few authors I like, a few books I like, and just read them over and over. I’m a chronic re-reader, self-diagnosed, landing somewhere between ashamed and proud. This summer I wanted to push myself to discover a couple of new authors and a couple of new books.

“Take Me Home” is one of the two novels/novellas that the author Ria M Apple has written. It’s the story of two young people who take a long car ride together and pretty much are enamored from the start. The narrative exists inside the head of 21-year-old Mia Alfred and the type of writing is very stream-of-consciousness. At times I loved it. How can you not love a book that has this as a quote:

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I couldn’t help but fall in love with the main character, Mia. I liked the way her mind took little detours or added silly little details all of a sudden, sometimes things that had nothing to do with the story. I liked that she had left her hometown even if she failed at explaining why (at least to me). She was more than believable as a character who is 21-years-old and on the cusp of maturity.

I also liked her love-interest, Gen Bennet. I like how their conversation is more bantering than anything, biting and fun and getting deeper and deeper.

As you can see there is loads to like about this book and I still had trouble finishing it. I don’t mean to be mean, I have read other reviews of “Take Me Home” and they say the same thing. This book needs major editing. Spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, formatting mistakes etc… sometimes pretty bad ones.

I’m not trying to make the author feel bad, should she read this review – like I said before, I actually loved it. I self-published “State of Emergency” and I know that there are mistakes in there even after several beta readings and self-edits. I desperately hope to publish it through my publisher in the future (and am planning to ask soon) since it would be gold to have a professional editor to look at it. Editing is needed, that’s all I mean. It’s almost impossible to only self-edit your work. “Take Me Home” is a lovely story, I think it deserves better.

I do recommend it as a nice romantic story, I enjoyed it very much at times.

Thanks for reading!

Summer update

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I’m spending this week in Norway, my big sister lives here with her boyfriend (manfriend?) and their five-year-old daughter. My parents and all our dogs are here too. It’s been lovely spending time in the Norwegian south surrounded by strawberry fields and mountains.

It’s also fun to revert back into being the little sister. I’m almost thirty and yet my big sister still calls me the Swedish word for “mischief”, she will say “mischief, will you help me with bla bla” I don’t remember what I did in toddlerhood to earn that nickname, but it’s stuck. Some girls got to be called Princesses when little but not I, no, I’m Mischief.

In between being social and playing with my niece, I have done a lot of writing. Like A LOT of writing. Two days ago something clicked in my brain and since then I have done 10k words. My newest novel, “The Biggest Secret” is at 50 000 words now but it’s not finished. I secretly wish for it to be 100k, I have never written such a long novel before. I think however, it will land at around 80 or 90k.

I will not manage to write at crazy speed for the rest of the novel of course but hope to still do at least 2k a day-ish. My wife has been doing a weekly commute for four months and she is finally on vacation today when she comes here tonight. I haven’t properly seen her for four months so you can bet that I will want to spend as much time with her as possible. With that said, she isn’t a morning person so I’m planning to write in the mornings before she wakes up.

I have also planned a couple of blog post for the next couple of weeks so keep an eye out for that.

I thought I could, so I did – a blog post about going from being unpublished to published author.

S is for Source – the next installment in the ABC posts. It’s about who we write for and where stories come from. This one is done in the same way as P is for Pressure.

Review of Take Me Home by Ria M Apple 

….and other reviews of the books I had in my summer to-read list.

Otherwise I hope you’re all surviving in the summer heat. Remember to hydrate and go inside if it gets too much. Heat can be dangerous even if us in the north tend to high temperatures in theory.

 

Zombie day 2019

It was the 15th of July 2015. Perhaps it was the heat, perhaps the fact that we had gone hiking the day before, perhaps it was just meant to be. On the 15th of July 2015 the wife and I had no energy. We were tired. The whole day dragged on in a mess of take-away and episodes of The Walking Dead or perhaps Game of Thrones. We walked our dogs of course, but it was short walks, they didn’t have much energy either. I couldn’t stop yawning, I didn’t write; we didn’t even play video games (and we play A LOT of video games in the summer). I talked with my best friend Marco – who you can find mentioned in every  “thank you” in the beginning of my books – and explained to him that wife and I had been like zombies all day. I don’t remember who suggested it, as a joke, might I add, that today was a “zombie day” and that now we had to “celebrate it every year”. Being who I am, I took it to heart. Here I am, fourth year in a row, celebrating or at least acknowledging that today is indeed Zombie Day.

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The form of how we observe this special holiday changes from year to year. Sometimes, like this year, the wife is working, so I’ll have to do this without her. Best friend Marco, is also working (however from home so I hope to at least hear from him occasionally) so I’m on my own here, fighting the good fight.

My zombie holiday activities for today:

Eating jello. Very devoid of nutrients but fun and not terrible when it comes to calories. Easy to prepare and reminds me of childhood and summer.
Binge watching old Modern Family episodes. Yes, yes, I should be watching zombie series and maybe I will later but I’m in the mood for Modern Family and Zombie Day is a day where you do what you feel like. If you’re looking for a list of zombie media I love, keep reading.
Reading Harry Potter.
Maybe some writing but only if I really feel like.
Take a nap? Maybe? Probably?

I’m a slightly stressful person. I’m always on the go, working, taking care of others, writing, cleaning, walking dogs, going to the gym. One winter my parents stared as I first did an hour Just Dance on the wii and then went on skiing for a couple of hours. Being almost thirty doesn’t change that. I’m bad at taking it easy, swinging between activity and too much exhaustion. Zombie Day forces me to wind down. I don’t need to be productive. Housework will be there tomorrow. Sure I need to walk the dog but even that can be done in a calm, relaxing manner.

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Zombie Day is also a perfect day for indulging in zombie media. I love zombies and one day I’m going to shower you all in my 9 part zombie book series (you just wait) but we’re not there yet and I have nothing of my own to offer you however here is a list of books, series, and films that I love.

Z Nation – TV series and to me the best zombie series there is. I love it so much. There is a spin-off to Z nation that is called Black Summer that I haven’t actually watched yet. It’s up on Netflix though so I might give that a try today.

The Walking Dead – TV series. I don’t really like it past season six but until then it’s so good.

Fear of the Walking Dead – spin-off series to The Walking Dead. Not my favorite but still totally okay.

Santa Clarita Diet – TV- series. Very different from traditional zombie series.! About a suburban real estate agent who becomes a zombie, a sentient one. I have a love/hate relationship with zombies who can talk/walk/think but I do enjoy this series and grieve that it was cancelled. It feels finished at the end of season 3 so it’s probably okay though.

Izombie – TV series. another series about sentient zombies. Doesn’t really feel like a zombie series at times. They use the word zombie though so a definite plus there. It’s about a zombie who solves crimes and it’s funny and interesting.

Resident Evil films – Quite famous and maybe I don’t need to include them. Traditional. There is a virus. It spreads and creates zombies.

I am Legend – Movie. Also famous and most people have probably have seen it. There is a virus. It spreads and creates zombies. There is supposed to be a book that is better but I haven’t read it. The movie is meh.

World War Z – book and movie. The movie is okay but the book is amazing! Best zombie book I have ever read. My wife isn’t a big reader but I spent hours reading it out loud to her just because it was so interesting I wanted to share it. It went through how different countries prepared and dealt with a zombie apocalypse. I borrowed it at the library but actually want to own it just so I can take it out and touch it sometime, that’s how good it was. Max brooks, the author, has written a book called “The Zombie survival guide” too and it’s on by to-be-read list.

I have read one lesfic novel about zombies called “Man Eaters” by Linda Kay Silva, it was really not good so it’s not making it on the list. It made me almost scared of trying out other zombie/lesfic books so if you know of any good ones, please send them my way.

The Walking Dead Game – video game from Telltale Games. These games are amazing whether you watch The Walking Dead or not. They aren’t too scary (for someone like me) and a joy to play. I fully recommend.

Then there are some pseudo zombie series, Van Helsing (some of the vampires act more like zombies) being one of them. There are also movies and stuff that has people being controlled however I don’t know where we should draw the line. Could you call Frankenstein’s monster a zombie? Probably not.

My list isn’t full of unknown, hidden gems in the zombie genre but I didn’t intend it to be. These series/movies/books are popular for a reason, they are good and they do just what they’re supposed to.

Time to get started, my jello isn’t going to eat itself.

Have a great day my friends and thank you for reading!