Kieran Kramer's Blog, page 3
July 31, 2014
Love Changes Everything: Celebrating Read-A-Romance-Month
So there’s almost nothing more exciting when you’re a romance writer than walking into a hotel chockablock full of other romance writers! Finally! Someone who gets that we not only believe in love, but we write about it for a living. When you think about how high-tech our world has become–how full of strife it is, too–it’s amazing that anyone can get away with penning tales about love and how it changes everything.
That’s my tagline, in fact: Love changes everything.
It’s deceptively simple, but it took me two years to come up with it. I needed to believe my tagline…my identity as a writer and a person would be firmly wrapped up in those words. I’ve even used it in several books.
What else but love has the power to transform to such an all-encompassing degree?
I decided that I’d make a video [see below] celebrating those writers who agree with me, so at the National Convention of Romance Writers of America in San Antonio this past week, I took some “Oprah-style” pictures of my writing buddies. Remember that episode? Oprah learned that the best angle for picture-taking was above the subject? You angle your phone, snap–and voila! Everyone looks like a rock star.
I know that as a romance author, I feel like a rock star because I get to do something for a living that makes people happy. There’s nothing better! I owe a lot to romance, and I plan on celebrating my immersion in this wonderful community as long as I can write these words:
Love changes everything.
Enjoy the video! And I’d love to hear from you, either here or on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.
XOXO Kieran P.S. Right after the video, I answer a few fun questions for Read-A-Romance-Month 2014 and recommend some other romance authors to read!
1. Describe the most daring, adventurous, or inspiring thing you ever did.
Running with those crazy bulls in Pamplona, Spain!
2. Tell us about your journey to becoming a writer. How did you decide to get started? Did you always know or was there a specific moment when you knew?
I wrote a small book when I was ten and stuck it between the strings of a guitar. I’d walk by occasionally and shake it. Every time I did, I knew that I was going to grow up and be a writer. I’d had freelance writing jobs and was an editor for a couple of years, but I didn’t get really serious about publishing a novel until I hit 40 and realized I wasn’t going to have forever. So when my husband got plucked from his Navy Reserve unit to take an Army position in Afghanistan for an entire year, I decided that I was going to work incredibly hard while he was away to fulfill my dream. It was easy to write about love: I missed my husband so much! And I also had more time…we ate a lot of pizza and I didn’t have to worry about shaving my legs, LOL! I wrote furiously as I was totally committed to getting published, even though I was being both mom and dad to our three children and teaching at the local high school. When I made that true commitment to my stories, it happened–I sold my first book!
3. Tell us about a book that changed your life.
A book that changed my life was Victoria Holt’s MISTRESS OF MELLYN. After reading that when I was fourteen, I decided that someday I would write a love story with a brooding hero and an oft-overlooked heroine in drab clothes who’d be transformed from an ugly duckling into a swan! Victoria Holt’s settings were so dramatic, too. I fell in love with the idea that they reflected the primal, powerful aspects of our own natures. If we stay connected to who we truly are–as the intuitive, determined heroine Marty does in MISTRESS OF MELLYN–surely everything will turn out for the best! I decided that I’d always write heroines like Marty–women who are fierce and smart beneath whatever facade society demands they assume.
Author recommendations:
Alyssa Alexander’s smart, emotional historical romances totally rock! And I can also highly recommend Kimberly Kincaid’s awesome foodie romances, Robin Covington’s sexy contemporaries, Tracy Brogan’s laugh-out-loud contemporaries and her delicious Scottish medieval historical, Jennifer McQuiston’s fabulous Regencies, and Avery Flynn’s steamy romances. All these authors are super talents!
July 15, 2014
You’re So Fine
March 15, 2014
Tractor Memories!
Oh, Lord, the tractor!
That’ll convert any suburban kid into a country one. When I was 12, I learned how to drive on a brand-spanking new orange stick-shift Kubota. It’s now 40-something years old and still going strong.
Dad bought the tractor for a lot of reasons: 1) to help with tearing down the dilapidated plantation home on our property, 2) to clear the land, which was overrun with all sorts of wild creatures and plant life, 3) to keep the grass mowed, once it was in, 4) to haul wagons full of lumber, logs, brush, and sometimes people, and 5) to pull hard on anything that needed pulling down, up, or out, such as a boat that he wanted to get up our boat landing (but might be stuck in the pluff mud of the creek) or the big monster vines that would wrap around the trees and literally choke them to death.
The old house–which had been neglected and ransacked over a period of decades–was beyond saving. It stood like a frail old woman overlooking Bohicket Creek. But the house had plenty of resources left for us to recycle into the log home Dad was building: mainly old clay bricks and big wooden beams.
My favorite tractor story is the one where we used it to pull down the house. Dad attached a giant rope to a beam, sat my sister, my brother, and me on the front of the tractor, and took off. The tractor reared high in the air, like a stallion, numerous times. We squealed and laughed, and finally, that beam came down and much of the house with it.
Nowadays, I can’t believe what dangerous hijinx we got up to on that tractor! We kids would put it in fourth gear and take off down the dirt road, or we’d run in mad circles on the land. And there’d always be someone on front, yelling, hanging on for dear life.
Who needs extreme sports when you’ve got a tractor?
March 13, 2014
Newsletter
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January 27, 2014
Moroccan Lentil Soup
From EatingWell: January/February 2013
This is my webmaster’s favorite winter soup! It’s super healthy and super tasty!
Nutrition Per serving: 152 calories; 1 g fat ( 0 g sat ); 0 mg cholesterol; 28 g carbohydrates; 0 g added sugars; 9 gprotein; 9 g fiber; 618 mg sodium; 681 mg potassium.
INGREDIENTS
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups chopped onions
2 cups chopped carrots
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground pepper
6 cups vegetable broth or reduced-sodium chicken broth
2 cups water
3 cups chopped cauliflower (about 1/2 medium)
1 3/4 cups lentils
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons tomato paste
4 cups chopped fresh spinach or one 10-ounce package frozen chopped spinach, thawed
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Instructions
Heat oil in a soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat; add onions and carrots and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 10 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Add cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon and pepper; cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute.
Add broth, water, cauliflower, lentils, tomatoes and tomato paste; bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, stirring occasionally, until the lentils are tender but not mushy, 45 to 55 minutes. Stir in spinach and cook until wilted, 5 minutes.
Just before serving, stir in cilantro and lemon juice.
January 22, 2014
Tractor Memories!
Oh, Lord, the tractor!
That’ll convert any suburban kid into a country one. When I was 12, I learned how to drive on a brand-spanking new orange stick-shift Kubota. It’s now 40-something years old and still going strong.
Dad bought the tractor for a lot of reasons: 1) to help with tearing down the dilapidated plantation home on our property, 2) to clear the land, which was overrun with all sorts of wild creatures and plant life, 3) to keep the grass mowed, once it was in, 4) to haul wagons full of lumber, logs, brush, and sometimes people, and 5) to pull hard on anything that needed pulling down, up, or out, such as a boat that he wanted to get up our boat landing (but might be stuck in the pluff mud of the creek) or the big monster vines that would wrap around the trees and literally choke them to death.
The old house–which had been neglected and ransacked over a period of decades–was beyond saving. It stood like a frail old woman overlooking Bohicket Creek. But the house had plenty of resources left for us to recycle into the log home Dad was building: mainly old clay bricks and big wooden beams.
My favorite tractor story is the one where we used it to pull down the house. Dad attached a giant rope to a beam, sat my sister, my brother, and me on the front of the tractor, and took off. The tractor reared high in the air, like a stallion, numerous times. We squealed and laughed, and finally, that beam came down and much of the house with it.
Nowadays, I can’t believe what dangerous hijinx we got up to on that tractor! We kids would put it in fourth gear and take off down the dirt road, or we’d run in mad circles on the land. And there’d always be someone on front, yelling, hanging on for dear life.
Who needs extreme sports when you’ve got a tractor?
January 8, 2014
Growing Up on Bohicket Creek
Growing up on Johns Island, South Carolina, from the time I was eleven was a big adventure. My Dad retired after twenty years in the Air Force at the age of 41. I’d always lived on military bases or in a town near one. But now we were waaaay out in the country, living on a plot of land that at one time held an old plantation house. Our land, graced with two massive oak trees as dual centerpieces, faced Bohicket Creek, where The Prince of Tides, the movie based on Pat Conroy’s book, was filmed. 
Bohicket Creek holds saltwater that streams in from the Edisto River. The Edisto connects to the Atlantic at Seabrook and Kiawah Islands. 
Bohicket’s as wide as any river and quite deep. Dolphins play in it all the time. It’s got oyster beds and mud flats and lots of marsh grass lining it. I remember thinking at first that it was ugly when the tide went down because the oysters and mud were exposed.
But after a while, I began to love the change of tides. I’d stand on the dock and look down at low tide and see shrimp leaping, or crabs scuttling, across the creek bottom. And at super low tide, we kids would venture forth into the mud and sink up to our thighs sometimes. 
But we had to wear shoes—we never wanted to walk over an oyster bed. The edges of the shells are like razors. When we’d move, the sucking mud sounds and the hundreds of tiny fiddler crabs running away from us and popping down their little mudholes made us feel like we were exploring an alien world.
I feel so lucky that I got to become a part of that landscape at such an impressionable age.
November 14, 2013
SAY YES Nominated for Historical Romance of the Year at RT!
I’m so excited to tell you that SAY YES TO THE DUKE has been nominated for Historical Romance of the Year at RT Books Reviews! I’m so honored. I look at the list of nominees and think, Wow! These authors are amazing! I feel really blessed. Thanks for all your support of my writing life. I love telling stories, and I’m so glad Janice and Luke’s story is making people happy! 
November 4, 2013
What’s in Your Pocketbook?
I’m fascinated by what’s in other women’s pocketbooks. In SWEET TALK ME, I show what’s in True Maybank’s almost right away. I think it says something about that woman, as innocuous as the items may be.
Right now, this is what I have in mine:
*a foldable brush/mirror compact I got from The Dollar Store years ago
*two Clinique lipsticks, “Beauty” and “Golden Brandy”
*a new shade of Loreal lipstick called “Everbloom”
*an Estee Lauder lipgloss wand, “Rock Candy,” which I bought for my last writing conference 
*two pens picked up from my last writing conference: one is from Kobo–I met the founder! He’s so nice!–and the other was accidentally swiped from the front desk at the Marriott
*a checkbook with a pink paisley Vera Bradley cover given to me by my kids for Mother’s Day
*an iPhone with the matching pink paisley Vera Bradley cover, received on the same Mother’s Day
*a pack of Kleenex, bought for me two weeks ago by my husband right before my Navy admiral brother’s retirement ceremony, where I used several to wipe my tears
*a credit card holder from RealSimple; it fans out, and it’s the one time I feel organized, when people in the cashier line admire them
*five business cards from cool writing contacts, including Lisa Cron, who wrote WIRED FOR STORY and Randy Ingermanson, who wrote WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES
*a stack of SWEET TALK ME business cards shoved in a pocket
*an empty business card holder that is supposed to hold business cards from new writing contacts and my own business cards
*a brown & green bird design Vera Bradley luggage tag/ID holder, where I keep my driver’s license and my most important cards and cash–if I ever have any
*a little pill box with a weiner dog on the cover; I don’t have a wiener dog, but I thought it was cute. The pill box has four Advils inside, and I usually wind up giving them to someone else.
*a few Benadryl pills I keep in my emergency pocket in case anyone around me has some kind of allergic reaction to something
*my glasses, which I need to drive and to see faraway things
*a hideous glasses case, which came with my pair and needs to be replaced–hmm, possible Christmas gift item for kids to look for?
*two pieces of hard candy from my last writers conference–wish they were chocolate instead, so they will molder there until I decide to get rid of them
*two sets of keys, one with a brand-new membership pass to a gym attached to it
Wow. Notice I don’t have any dimes or pennies on the bottom. I used to all the time, but now I pay for things with cards more than ever. I want to figure out how to do that on my phone!
So that’s me from a handbag/ pocketbook/ purse perspective. I’m clearly a mom and a writer. I’m also someone who likes to play nurse and who wishes she were organized but hasn’t quite managed it. Those business cards I received should wind up in a data base somewhere, but I never get around to it. We’ll see what happens with that gym membership!!
November 1, 2013
Frequently Asked Questions
(Coming Soon)
