Kate Noble's Blog, page 36

Process Stories

I'm in a crappy place today.  Not in real life – in real life I'm in southern California, its 70 degrees on the first day of March, it can't get much nicer.   No, I'm in a crappy place in terms of my book.  I'm at that place that every writer knows and dreads, the place where you start to question everything, and nothing is as good as it was when it was bright and shiny but still solely in your brain.   Where you just want to pull everything apart, or shake your characters and scream "what...

Countdown…

Holy cats, February has been flying, right?  Flying so fast that, I looked at my calendar and saw that Revealed's mass market release is a mere week away!  Revealed was originally released a year ago, in trade format.   This means, for those of you who missed it the first time around, can now find it again at your local bookstore, at a highly reasonable mass market rate.

But it makes me think:  has it really been a whole year since my second baby was released upon the world?  Since Phillippa B...

The Holiday Lineup

It's fairly common to get two holidays in a row – after all, each day has an eve before, and for Christmas and New Year's, they are celebrated.  Three, is far less so — although we Americans tend to stretch holidays in their weekends, only one day is Memorial Day, Veteran's Day, etc. But this week, we have four, count 'em, FOUR legitimate, actual holidays in a row!  Madness!

Here's my breakdown:

Sunday.  Valentine's Day.

I'm not really a Valentine's lover or hater.  I consider myself...

Reading Down the Pile

In my reboot of the website, I took down a feature called "What Kate's Reading" because I didn't feel like I updated it enough to make it worth the reader's while.  Which means, I haven't told you what books I've been reading recently.  Time for an update!

But first, a caveat.  Like most everyone else who reads voraciously, I have a To Be Read pile.  Mine is less a pile and more one small shelf and two-larger-boxes-that-live-under-my-bed.   I also have a separate shelf entirely devoted to...

Stuff!

Hey, lookie what I got:

Previous to now, I have not had any print materials.  I have gone to conferences and written my name and email on a napkin for someone that asked for my contact info.  I am SO pleased to have finally gotten my act together and had these cards made.  Trust me, I'm going to be handing them out to everyone – the barista at the coffee shop, the Barnes and Noble help desk guy, everyone.

I love that they are thematically in line with my website (scrolly-flower-bubble...

After the Rains

Ok, so I've been living in Los Angeles for about six months now, and I think I figured out why A. so many other people live here and B. they shoot movies here:

Its freaking gorgeous.

Seriously.  I mean I knew it was nice.  Temperate.  There's a beach.   But its been raining for a week, and this weekend, when the sun came out, it became paradise.  The smog was cleared, the hills and ground were this verdant green that rivals emeralds, and you could see clear to the ocean.

Oh, just look:

This was t...

A Life in Pieces, or Why I Now Think in Facebook.

I blame Twitter.

No one felt the need to be concisely witty before Twitter.  Oh sure, we were short and sweet in our Facebook statuses (statusi?) but we tended to simply state our purposes, saying "going to the store, need tomato sauce for mom's lasagna," or "seeing a movie tonight, so excited!"  But suddenly, with the birth of Twitter, we all feel the importance of our declarative statements.  They need to be catchy, intelligent, cheeky, thought provoking, and hilarious all at once.

On the...

I have not left the house in 3 days…

And it feels so good. I'm shocked that I've showered and put on real clothes.  I've logged several hours on Beatles Rockband.  Several more have been devoted to the viewing of British television.  And there has been the Operation interludes (remember Operation?  My niece and nephew got the game for Christmas and they got rid of the charley horse and the wishbone!  The wishbone was the easiest one!  With whom do I lodge a complaint?)  This is what Christmas should be: one day of gifts...

Smugglering!

Hi Everyone!  Quick Blog today, because I am over at the Book Smugglers being initiated into that fabulous rite of passage, Smugglivius, their year-in-review.  I compiled a list of all my favorite things from the year 2009, and there's a new Summer of You excerpt, AND a giveaway!  It is my Smugglivius gift to you all, so head over and check it out!

In other non-denominational holiday stuff I am pleased to announce… I AM DONE.  Done with cards, done with shopping, wrapping, shipping...

The Russian News

I have been holding on to this tidbit of information for a while, I didn't want to say anything until the contracts were signed and filed, but now that they have been, I am pleased to tell you… drumroll please…

I've had my first foreign rights sale!  Revealed will be published (sometime in the next 18 months) in Russian!  I am incredibly excited, not only to have Revealed cross the pond, but because it's a whole new alphabet.  I can't wait to see what the titles look like in Cyrillic. 

In...