Kim Fielding's Blog, page 30

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 1

In a fit of masochism, I’ve decided to try a 30-Day Writing Challenge. Join me! You can comment here with your own responses to the day’s prompt.

Five problems with social media.

Perfect!

It can become overwhelming. It takes a lot of time for me to keep up with my personal and professional social media.
It can be a time suck. I don’t want to know how many hours I’ve spent playing on social media when I could have been doing something more productive.
It can be destructive. Because of the nature of social media, some people are tempted to use it in harmful ways. It gives trolls and others free rein.
It can be misleading. Because it’s so fast and unmediated, social media lends itself to fast rumors and misinformation.
It can mangle language. I wince at all the misspellings and grammatical errors–especially when I’ve made them!

 

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Tales from the Road: Scenes from Rattlesnake

I recently visited Vegas. Part of the drive back from there mirrors Jimmy’s drive at the beginning of Rattlesnake, so I took a couple of photos.

This is near the town of Mojave, which isn’t far from where Jimmy picks up a hitchhiker. And that’s how the story begins.

If you’ve read the book, you know a pivotal scene happens at a rest stop in Fresno. I made that rest stop up, but here’s a real one nearby. With pretty paving and a recruitment ad for the Highway Patrol.

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Tales from the Road: Scenes from Motel. Pool.

As you may know, I recently spent a week in Vegas for the RT Booklovers convention. See? Here I am, ready to sign books.

While I was there, I also took some photos of scenes from Motel. Pool. I thought those of you unfamiliar with Vegas might enjoy seeing these.

Above, some photos from the Strip: people playing Blackjack at Bellagio, the Strip, Caesar’s Palace, and Treasure Island.

And there’s the Venetian, of course, with Treasure Island behind it.

Remember when Tag went to the mall? This is it. There’s the Apple store where he researched Jack. And if you look at that third photo, you’ll see I found Tag at the mall.

Soooo tiiiiiiiired

I am back from RT in Vegas. It was an amazing experience but I’ve had to jump right back into the day job–and I’m exhausted. I know, I know. Poor me.

Let me begin by saying that if you must drive 500 miles each way, you want to do it with Amy Lane. Who’s still totally fun and interesting to talk to even after 8 hours on the road. And it’s not a particularly exciting drive. Our highlights included someone with a trailer full of the ugliest furniture on the planet, a flash flood alert in the desert, and a sign for Zzyzx (which you might remember from Motel. Pool.). At our lunch stop east of Bakersfield, Amy heard an interesting conversation in the bathroom, in which we also learned how to say chicken in multiple languages.

We’re also pretty sure we’ve discovered where lazy mobsters go to dump bodies: behind Whiskey Pete’s.

Vegas is not my favorite city. But I have to admit, the scenery can be very nice. On the left, the view from my room at the Rio. On the right, a different view.

Busy

There’s busy, and then there are the kind of weeks when you work until midnight every night, wake up to work again at 6:30, and still don’t get everything done. Guess which kind of week I’ve been having.

 We had a minor crisis when younger daughter woke up and couldn’t find her glasses. This is her bedroom–and you can see how glasses could easily be misplaced. Hell, she could have a herd of elephants in there, and as long as they were quiet, we’d never know. (No, that’s not a bloody handprint under the shark. It’s paint. Don’t ask.) I tried to get her to search for the glasses by putting things away, but she accused me of just trying to get her to clean her room. Which had crossed my mind, to be honest. Anyway, she did not clean but did find her glasses two days later, so that’s mostly good.

Tomorrow morning I leave for RT in Vegas. It’s a 475 mile drive, which I would be dreading except I get to do it with the amazing Amy Lane. In the last 6 months, she’s put up with me on a road trip to San Diego (400 miles each way) and a flight from Orlando to Houston, which proves she’s a patient woman. And we have fun together.

I’ve packed more for a week in Vegas than I did for 5 months in Europe. Here’s my suitcase with my younger daughter, for scale. She’s 5 feet tall and probably weighs less than the suitcase. I also have a box of swag. Plus I shipped two other boxes–one of which the USPS has misrouted, and the delivery status of which is unknown. And, according to the people at the USPS, unknowable. Nice.

In preparation for RT, I redyed my hair. And got a manicure to match. I may be missing half my swag, but I will be colorful, dammit!

In celebration of RT, Dreamspinner has temporarily priced 35 books for $1! One of them is my Motel. Pool.–which takes place mostly in Vegas, and was inspired by a road trip a few years ago. If you’ve been hesitant about this book because it’s a ghost story, now’s your chance to give it a try. You won’t regret it.

Have you checked out my Upcoming Releases page lately? In the next 7 months, I’ll have 5 (!) novels and a novella come out, plus translations and several audiobooks. And Venona Keyes and I are just finishing up another novel. This explains the busyness I mentioned at the beginning.

Okay. I have exams to grade before I hit the road. If you’re going to RT, make sure to say hello!

 

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A book is like a loaf of bread

Today I’m making bread… and analogies.

All books begin with the same basic ingredients: words. By themselves, words are only minimally interesting. Have you ever eaten plain, raw flour? Ew. Even plain sugar isn’t all that exciting. And although sometimes we might throw in a word that’s unexpected and intriguing–the fennel seeds in today’s recipe–most of what we include are those mundane, workday words. Just like every loaf of bread I make includes flour, fat, liquid, salt, and a leavening agent. All very simple. yet we can combine them in so many ways!

So we combine those words and get something new and different. A big ball of dough. And that dough looks interesting. If you poke it, it feels nice and bouncy. It probably even smells really good. It may be a little tempting to take a nibble. After all, those words are nicely mixed together, right? But don’t give into the temptation, because it’s not nearly ready. It won’t taste good. This is a book’s early drafts. An early draft is definitely the start of something good–but only the start. We need to give the dough time–and a nice hot oven. Our book needs edits.

 

 

But if we are patient, if we are willing to to subject our creation to the heat, look what we get! Something amazing–a transformed object that is far beyond the sum of its parts. A delicious loaf of bread. Or, of course, a new book. Mmm!

And to take the analogy further, we can have comfortable, familiar white bread books. Rich, slightly decadent ones made with milk and eggs. Exotic ones. Spicy ones. We can throw in some surprises, like fruit or chocolate chips. We can gobble the whole thing right away, while it’s still warm from the oven. Or we can stretch it out over a couple of days, enjoying it piece by piece.

I’m going to go eat some bread now.

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Happy Friday

Cue maniacal laughter.

Fridays are supposed to be my quiet days to stay home and get work done. I needed this Friday badly: I have a stack of assignments to grade, galley proofs for one novel, edits for a second novel, final beta edits for a third novel, and a deadline to meet for a short and an essay for the day job.

No big deal, right?

So then the younger kid is home because she puked on the way to school–but she’s not feeling quite sick enough to simply zonk out. She’s currently curled up with Anne of Green Gables, periodically pausing to ask me vocabulary questions (“Mom, what’s a raspberry cordial?”). Then my once a month maid service arrived. And–simultaneously–so did the glass guy to replace the cracked window in the living room.

So nice and quiet.

And then on top of it all I had a brainstorm for a project that involves domain name registration, trademarks, and website design.

Thus the maniacal laughter.

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Back on the West Coast

I had a wonderful several days at the Dreamspinner author workshop. I didn’t take many photos. I didn’t even do any Disney or Universal stuff, even though we were in Orlando. But it was great to hang out with old friends and new. We got lots of useful and inspiring information too.

And then I had to schlep myself all the way back across the continent and to real life.

I came back to lots of things: cover art concepts for Love Can’t Conquer, which releases this summer; 3rd round edits for the same book; partial edits for Equipoise, which rereleases in November; and beta edits for Controlled, which I will be submitting soon. No rest for the wicked! But the good news is that in the second half of this year, you should expect lots of new stuff from me.

Also at home, I discovered my husband’s new glasses had arrived. He’s red-green colorblind, but these glasses allow him to see color. Which is really nifty, I think. He’s thrilled.

So now it’s bad to the grinding stone. Next journeys? Family trip to SoCal at the end of the month, then in April I’ll be at RT in Vegas. I hope to see some of you there!

 

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Scenes from the WIP

One of the two novels I’m working on right now takes places mostly in San Francisco. Since I was in the city over the weekend, I took a few location shots.

 This is Market Street. The characters in the book live not far from there, and a small but important scene takes place on this street.

 

 

 

 These are photos of the Ferry Building, one of my favorite places in the city. Inside the building are numerous shops–most of them gourmet food places–and restaurants. Outside is the ferry terminal and a gorgeous view of the Bay Bridge. My characters visit this building several times.

 That’s the back of the Ferry Building.

 And the final scene in the book takes place behind the Ferry Building, on this bench. My characters don’t shop at Nordstrom’s first, though.

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San Francisco

I spent the weekend in San Francisco with some friends. Mostly we ate. But we visited some really fun places. Picture-heavy post!

We ate: That’s sarde in saor, a dish you may remember mentioned in Venetian Masks. Yum!

We stayed at the Drake hotel, where Sir Francis himself hovers over the bar and I found a chair I like:

We had drinks at a bar called Novela:

We saw a horse in a roof and a shirtless guy in a hotel. Also waved at the couple making out just inside their hotel window, but I don’t think you can see them in this photo:

 

We had a wonderful drag queen brunch:

 

Tomorrow I’ll post location photos from one of my WIPs.

 

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