Kara Lennox's Blog, page 3

Days 1 &2: The trip to Belgrade

It took an entire day and three flights to get from Long Beach, CA, to Belgrade, Serbia. Fortunately, everything went smoothly. The Super Shuttle van picked us up at 5:30 a.m. We were the last stop before the airport, and with very little traffic and almost no lines at LAX, we ended up at our [...]

Cycling in Serbia

I am just back from a cycling vacation in Serbia! Most people's reaction when they hear this is, "Why would you want to go there?" The answers are many. I'm going to be posting my trip diary and pictures over the next few days so you can see/hear for yourself what a fabulous country Serbia [...]

Report Card: RWA 2011 in New York

I've been to more than twenty RWA national conferences (That's Romance Writers of America for my non-writer readers). If you do the math, it means that a) I started attending before I was of legal drinking age, or b) I'm older than dirt. I'll let you guess which is true! Anyway, each year I attend, [...]

Title Contest–help me name my book!

Coming up with just the right title for a book is quite the ordeal for me. But no matter what title I settle on, there is always a good chance the publisher will change it. Right now, my task is to come up with a list of alternatives for Book #4 of PROJECT JUSTICE. The [...]

How Much Research is Enough?

Recently I got a comment on my blog that made me feel kind of bad. It went like this: "I am reading [book title]. On page xxx, [character name] 'threw a grape to [the dog]'. Sadly, grapes are extremely toxic to dogs – please research your material and do not promote harmful actions." The commenter [...]

Mosaic Monday

I am new at Mosaic Monday, so bear with me … I made a mosaic of  mosaics! This is an older hobby that I've picked up again. The two picture frames and the picture of two butterflies is mine. The other is a picture I took during a recent workshop. If you want to play [...]

Mosaic Workshop

As a creative writer, it helps me to occasionally engage different parts of my creative self. I love mosaic, and this community workshop was just the thing to give my deadline sludged brain a break. The workshop is free to the public and goes on all summer. This month's project is butterflies. We designed our boards, then picked out tiles from bins of broken pottery and glass. Then we glue them down and grout. Mine isn't finished yet. I didn't get a very good picture of it, but I thought you ...

Gardening Day

I'm exhausted in a pleasant way. Put in my vegetable patch today. It's not extravagant. Just a few squash and pepper plants and some lettuce (including some exotic kinds) to go with the tomato plants already there. I also planted some herbs–chives, mint, cilantro and parsley. Already have oregano and sage and rosemary. I forgot basil plants, the most important!

We had to "plow" up new ground for the garden. It was covered in thick grass and weeds and the ground was very hard. Thank goodness...

My first Publisher's Weekly Review

Okay, it's for a book that is not published.

Here's the deal: As part of the judging process for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Competition, PW reviewers read all of the quarter-finalist entries. Here is how my review started:

"A serial killer with a penchant for twins haunts the pages of this smoothly-plotted thriller …"

If you want to read the rest of the review, go here: https://www.createspace.com/pub/member/feedback.abna.do and scroll to the bottom. If you would like to download an excerpt f...

85 percent there as deadline looms

Deadline is April 25. Two weeks to go and still 15 percent left to write, yikes.

Shadows from the Past

We bought new curtains and curtain rods for the bedroom. Found some cute black wrought iron ones that match the bed. Not sure about brown curtains. I visualize chocolate brown as the accent color for the flamingo–could be pretty. Or not. Depends on what bed linens I can find.

And … Finally got Rob moved into his own office! For the first time since we've lived here, we can use all three...