Kathleen Baldwin's Blog, page 4
April 4, 2013
BOOK LAUNCH DAY GIVEAWAY!!
I will be at at Honestly YA today celebrating the launch of Diary of A Teenage Fairy Godmother. (A contemporary teen fantasy romance for middle grade/YA readers) Sign up for the rafflecopter contest and win one of the free books.
Giving away books
and talking about the
Upside of Heartbreak.
There really is an upside. Yep! And just to prove I know what I’m talking about I’ll confess about my first broken heart.
Come win a book at HonestlyYA.com
BOOK LAUNCH DAY GIVEAWAY!! is a post from: Kathleen Bal...
April 1, 2013
Basketball Droids Have Taken Over My Neighborhood
One of my sons wrote the book and I’m quite pleased with his story. It takes several unexpected turns. Check it out. See if you like my illustrations.
Description:
Chance Bradley is a smart kid who is an inventor and talented at sports. After creating a droid for his science project that can play basketball with him, he thinks his life is perfect. That is until strange things start going on in his neighborhood and his droid may want...
November 8, 2012
How to Brainstorm Effectively
Visit me today over on the Plotting Princesses where I’m blogging on Brainstorming 101. I’ll briefly discuss the mechanics of successful brainstorming, along with 5 helpful hints on how to brainstorm effectively.
How to Brainstorm Effectively is a post from: Kathleen Baldwin
January 15, 2012
Enter the Bizarre World of Author Carole Fowkes
“Quirky horror stories with tasty recipes”
As her website, CaroleFowkes.com, attests, Carole is the author of quirky horror stories with tasty recipes. That’s a peculiar combo. Carole also writes Sci-Fi-Murder-Mysteries and Outlandish Fantasies with a touch of Romance. More peculiar combos.
My personal favorite of Carole’s short story collections is titled Out of Character. This contains two of her bizarre fantasies. Both stories are about writers, which may be why I like them so much. Very Fun...
December 29, 2011
The Highwayman Came Waltzing as a Manga
Some time ago my publisher sold the rights to The Highwayman Came Waltzing to a Japanese Manga Publisher. I’d not seen a copy until I stumbled across it online the other day. I thought you might have fun seeing it in manga form. I’d really like to look inside to see how they translated it into drawings, but so far, I’m having trouble ordering a copy from Japan.
The story is set in Regency England. It’s about a group of impoverished women who play Robin hood to the suffering families on their s...
December 26, 2011
Natural Born Writer – The Telling Trait
There is one immovable, immutable, indelible trait that all natural born writers share. In times of deepest stress or incredible joy, we write in our heads. Despite the entire world collapsing a writer cannot help but observe details that will make the story live on.
Natural born writers catalog sensory data. They store emotional reactions and poignant bits of dialogue as events unfold around them. This happens out of no conscious effort on the writer’s part. It just happens. No matter how nig...
June 4, 2011
Limerick for Pantsers
I enjoyed speaking in Tucson to the Saguaro Romance Authors. Eve Crook sent me a fun limerick for Pantsers.
What a fabulous group they are – very well organized and extremely supportive of one another. It encouraged me to see that kind of camaraderie among writers when so often the tendency is to be somewhat competitive. I’m a firm believer in the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats. Your success is helpful for me, and mine is good for you. Witness the wonders JK Rowlings’ success did for...
February 8, 2011
Jules Verne – Writer Who Paid The Price!
Jules Verne is one of the top five most translated authors in the world. Yes, Yes, Everyone knows he was a brilliant writer, educated in law and the sciences, a visionary.
But Wikipedia makes this speculative, almost rude, comment about him: “His interest in writing often cost him progress in other subjects.”
Hhmm, interesting comment.
Annoying comment.
As a writer, that darned comment sticks in my craw,
grinds my gizzard,
and altogether snarls my tail feath...
January 25, 2011
Six Things Charles Dickens & Jane Austen Never Did
How would two of our favorite authors, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, fare as writers in today’s world? I have confidence they’d cope surprisingly well with technology and the added demands of promotion in today’s marketplace? Let’s pretend Charles and Jane are contemporaries and very close friends. Observe as they wrestle with the challenges of the modern writer.
Six Things Jane Austen & Charles Dickens Never Did:
1. Tweet, Twitter, or otherwise Twerp. In their day a twit was a silly foppish...
January 16, 2011
Where Do Ideas Come From?
Writers are often asked, “Where do your ideas come from?”
Having studied the psychology of creativity in college, participated in research, taught creative theories in workshops and classrooms, etc, I could give you a list of technical answers that would include explanations about brainwaves, neural pathways, and early childhood development. But today, I decided to point in a different direction – one not often discussed:
New ideas appear as a result of our having acting upon other ideas. In o...
