Kate Copeseeley's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
Selling Out...
In Six Keys my protagonist has a conversation with her mother about selling out. Basically, the point is, if you take money for your craft -your gift- you are a sell-out. You have given your soul for cold hard cash. My point isn't as harsh in the book, but sometimes I feel like that about my own writing.
Up until now, I've kept all my glorious words to myself, with the exception of a very few friends and family that I've been brave enough to show my stories to.
I've been writing quite a long time, actually. I think I started reading in kindergarten, but I started reading the REAL books in 2nd grade. Like anyone who discovers the glory and power of imagination combined with the written word, my world opened up and I felt like I could go anywhere I read about. I was one of those character: Nancy Drew, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Anne Shirley, Alanna of Trebond, Josephine March, or Elnora Comstock.
And thus began my desire to create my own worlds for readers to get lost in.
My first stories were sad little affairs of 2 or 3 pages. I've saved them all. And laugh continuously over them.
When I was in high school, I wrote the first third of an adult romance. I still don't know what I was thinking. It was full of drama and utterly ridiculous, but I loved the characters. I smile even now, when I think about them.
Right after that, I decided that Science Fiction was the way to go and I wrote about 23 chapters in that, before I gave up completely. Rhiannon was, I think, a misdirected Anne McCaffrey character who fell out of the pages of Crystal Singer or something. She was tall, gorgeous and sassy.
In the next phase of my writing career, I wrote nothing but poetry and short stories. The short stories were part of a creative writing course I took. That was probably one of the best decisions of my life. I learned so much about self-editing and finding my "voice".
Then all was silent. I was rushing through a double major in Computer Science and Applied Computer Graphics. I was busy, busy, busy -too busy to write or breathe. But there was an idea, a small inkling of something I wanted to try out.
And for five years, that small inkling was a sketch here, a brainstorm there... one chapter then another.
I got married. I had a baby. I got a job with an independent game studio, coding my brains out.
One day, the book was done, I had done my edits and my rewrites and there it was. A work of genius? Ha! But MY story, all MINE.
Back to the question at hand...
Am I a sell-out?
No, I am a writer.
I've thrown in the Towel.
Not in life, or writing, thank goodness, although I've been nice and busy with a sick baby the past week. Sick babies are the saddest creatures in the world, with their sad eyes, and upset tummies or runny noses.
No, I've given up, instead, on Writing Contests. They are not worth the energy, it seems to me. I spend hours and hours and hours on my entry, refining and editing, only to find that the winner is some blind woman who taught herself how to spin ordinary orange wool into bread for homeless children.
Which is fine. I can lose a contest with the best of them. The frustrating part to me is not knowing how I did overall. Did I suck? Was I okay with a weak plot? Was the dialogue great, but the prose terrible? Was it the subject matter -i.e. is Fantasy a dumb subject to take up?
I've made a private resolution. No more contests without feedback. Contests are great, and motivating, but if you don't have the chance of hearing what is good and bad about your entry, I've got no interest.
Good luck to all you writers with blind weavers of bread.
No, I've given up, instead, on Writing Contests. They are not worth the energy, it seems to me. I spend hours and hours and hours on my entry, refining and editing, only to find that the winner is some blind woman who taught herself how to spin ordinary orange wool into bread for homeless children.
Which is fine. I can lose a contest with the best of them. The frustrating part to me is not knowing how I did overall. Did I suck? Was I okay with a weak plot? Was the dialogue great, but the prose terrible? Was it the subject matter -i.e. is Fantasy a dumb subject to take up?
I've made a private resolution. No more contests without feedback. Contests are great, and motivating, but if you don't have the chance of hearing what is good and bad about your entry, I've got no interest.
Good luck to all you writers with blind weavers of bread.
My Book is Selling Like Hotcakes?!
So, a few posts ago I mentioned how I was selling one book a day. And believe me, I was happy to do so. All of a sudden, however, my book is selling, 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 (yesterday) per day.
I am flabbergasted by it. Is my book on a list somewhere that I don't know about? No one seems to be reviewing it anywhere. Yet all of a sudden, my books have taken a 4 or 5 fold leap in sales.
Where did that come from? Word of mouth? Like I said before, a list somewhere? I don't advertise, much, I don't have a big website or a review in NYtimes, but here I am, little old me, getting so many books sold a day! It's crazy.
So, I'm happy to report, that it looks like I'm halfway to my per day selling goal of 10 books per day in 6 mths.
Wow.
I am flabbergasted by it. Is my book on a list somewhere that I don't know about? No one seems to be reviewing it anywhere. Yet all of a sudden, my books have taken a 4 or 5 fold leap in sales.
Where did that come from? Word of mouth? Like I said before, a list somewhere? I don't advertise, much, I don't have a big website or a review in NYtimes, but here I am, little old me, getting so many books sold a day! It's crazy.
So, I'm happy to report, that it looks like I'm halfway to my per day selling goal of 10 books per day in 6 mths.
Wow.
What My Mom Says...
I'm thirty-two. I've been out of the house for... wait let me do the math... on my calculator... 14 years. I'm married. I have one child and one more on the way.
And yet, I will always care what my mom says. It's one of those things you don't get over.
So let me back up the train. My first memories of my mom highlight her with a book. She is the lady who taught me the meaning of the word bibliophile. Which is cool, because I think that is what got me going on the whole reading journey -her love of books. I think I just wanted to know... what was so great about reading?
Then I tried it out, and I was hooked for life.
I introduced my mom to YA fantasy. She was always curious about what her kids were reading (she still is, with two teenagers in the house). I'd read Robin McKinley or whoever and pass it along to her when I was done. She's read everyone on my top YA fantasy list and even passed stuff on to me, occasionally. She loved Hunger Games as much as I did.
So I knew I had to pass along my newest draft of Compis to my mom.
I know people who get nervous about their first reviews or when they get a blog mention. I get nervous when my mom reads something I've written, because I know she has great taste and she'll be honest. OMG, I wish you could have seen my face when I had her read my first story with a SEX SCENE. hahahaha
Yet I've never been as nervous as I was this time, because I LOVE this story and these characters like they are a part of me. You know how authors talk about the book they had to write? This is my book. I dream about this book. I obsess over it. YA fantasy is my thing, my passion. I've wanted to write a YA fantasy book for, well, forever.
I never thought I could be a writer at all, never finished a book until Six Keys, so I focused on other things. Then I had this dream (Okay, this will sound funny, but I get pretty much all my story ideas from dreams) about being in a tribe and turning into a person who could fly. Man did that stick in my head BIG TIME. I was in the middle of doing a major revision on Six Keys, so I absolutely refused to let myself write it.
But I couldn't get rid of it. I became obsessed with the plot in a big way, so I bought myself a notebook and starting jotting down my ideas about the world of my dreams. I thought out the characters and the land and the laws and the way the world worked. And when I finally finished Six Keys, AND fulfilled my work obligations, I went for it. Working part time and as a mom, I wrote 15,000 in a week. Unheard of for me. I got about half the book, 30,000 written by the end of the month and then, in another month I finished it.
It was a breeze! The easiest writing I've ever done. I still can't believe how quickly it went. Okay, enough gushing.
She loved it. I'm just so relieved. Whew! :)
And yet, I will always care what my mom says. It's one of those things you don't get over.
So let me back up the train. My first memories of my mom highlight her with a book. She is the lady who taught me the meaning of the word bibliophile. Which is cool, because I think that is what got me going on the whole reading journey -her love of books. I think I just wanted to know... what was so great about reading?
Then I tried it out, and I was hooked for life.
I introduced my mom to YA fantasy. She was always curious about what her kids were reading (she still is, with two teenagers in the house). I'd read Robin McKinley or whoever and pass it along to her when I was done. She's read everyone on my top YA fantasy list and even passed stuff on to me, occasionally. She loved Hunger Games as much as I did.
So I knew I had to pass along my newest draft of Compis to my mom.
I know people who get nervous about their first reviews or when they get a blog mention. I get nervous when my mom reads something I've written, because I know she has great taste and she'll be honest. OMG, I wish you could have seen my face when I had her read my first story with a SEX SCENE. hahahaha
Yet I've never been as nervous as I was this time, because I LOVE this story and these characters like they are a part of me. You know how authors talk about the book they had to write? This is my book. I dream about this book. I obsess over it. YA fantasy is my thing, my passion. I've wanted to write a YA fantasy book for, well, forever.
I never thought I could be a writer at all, never finished a book until Six Keys, so I focused on other things. Then I had this dream (Okay, this will sound funny, but I get pretty much all my story ideas from dreams) about being in a tribe and turning into a person who could fly. Man did that stick in my head BIG TIME. I was in the middle of doing a major revision on Six Keys, so I absolutely refused to let myself write it.
But I couldn't get rid of it. I became obsessed with the plot in a big way, so I bought myself a notebook and starting jotting down my ideas about the world of my dreams. I thought out the characters and the land and the laws and the way the world worked. And when I finally finished Six Keys, AND fulfilled my work obligations, I went for it. Working part time and as a mom, I wrote 15,000 in a week. Unheard of for me. I got about half the book, 30,000 written by the end of the month and then, in another month I finished it.
It was a breeze! The easiest writing I've ever done. I still can't believe how quickly it went. Okay, enough gushing.
She loved it. I'm just so relieved. Whew! :)
There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars.
How Many Words AND Another Review...
I've gotten so used to using this blog to vent about my reader experiences that it feels weird to talk about my writing again. Compis has moved into type editing(YAY!!! No, seriously, YAYAYAYAYAY! I hate editing past the 3rd round or so, when you're not cutting or fixing plot issues and just nitpicking) and when I get my spiffy world map from my spiffy artist, it will soon be released. I'm hoping for the 3rd week in April, but we'll see how long the final edit takes.
And on to that 80 days thing, I've written... (have to go check my word count...) 4,376 words. That is two things: First, the next short story in the Angelic Agents series. Can't get enough of Gideon and Samora. And of course, the sequel to Compis, which has no title yet, so I will call it the next in the Five Tribes series.
And now that we've moved past the business portion of the program, let's talk about my next indie review:
At this point in time, I have Marked by Kim Richardson on the agenda.
So Marked (book 1 in the Soul Guardians series, book 2 of which will be out in May, hopefully!) is the story of Kara Nightingale, a teenage artist living in what I assume to be Canada (which is an assumption, but there's a lot of French stuff around and the author is from Canada, soooo... I think it's a safe assumption). Up until the story starts she's lived with her crazy mom who says she sees demons and avoided making friends for the most part except Mathieu, the one guy who can seem to deal around her mom.
On her way to a major presentation of her work, one that could mean everything to her future career, she is hit by a bus and that is when the real story begins. Kara wakes up in an elevator, staring down a grumpy chimpanzee elevator attendant, and after realizing that she is stone cold dead, she is thrown into her new life as a Guardian Angel (GA).
This book is has one of the most interesting worlds I've read about in a long time. My mom found it confusing, but then again, she comes from a more strict religious background. There are several religious elements at play in the story, you have guardian angels, archangels, reincarnation(not in every case, though), the Chief (who I assume is God?) and of course, multiple levels of demons.
The GA's job is to in the best case, prevent their assigned case file from dying, at worst, save the souls from the dead mortal. The demon's job is ALWAYS to kill and eat the mortal's soul, thus making themselves more powerful, and to capture and eat the GAs, if they can.
Kara is a Rookie GA, meaning that she's in training and she's been assigned to David, super hot GA with a cocky charm and flirty wit. He takes her through all her first case files, teaches her the ins and outs of demon defense.
So that is the basic story. Without going into spoilers, my overall impressions. I liked the characters, David cracked me up, he was pretty funny. The author does some great jokes about his addiction to winking at pretty girls. Kara comes off more as a quiet girl with deep reserves of strength. She was much better to me than Meghan in the first book of the Iron Fey series. Kara didn't whine much, she felt understandable pain at her short life, but she also sucked it up and did her job as best as she could. I thought her reactions in situations were realistic and I didn't once think, "What the crap?" like I did when I read Hocking's first book in the Trylle Trilogy, where she discovers she is in love with the guy after like a WEEK. Seriously.
Let's talk about love here. What I really really liked about this book is even though the main characters liked each other, even though there is obviously a love interest hinted at, and some really great boy-girl moments, there is NO RUSH to declarations of love. That is my biggest pet peeve with YA books I've read lately. It used to be in a story that a high school girl met a high school boy and you know, they DATED for a while before they fell deeply in love for all of eternity. These characters were so normal and likeable in that respect. Very impressed on that note.
I also, having read a lot of more serious YA fantasy of late, appreciated some of the more lighthearted aspects of this book. The various simian elevator attendants were hilarious! Not to mention the forgetful oracle office workers.
My only wish for this first book in the series would have been more backstory on Kara's mother, her art(which seemed like a fascinating part of her former world that I would have like touched on) and more on her friendship with Mathieu. Like maybe some flashbacks?
Anyway, that's my review. This book gets four stars from me and I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel. Can't wait to see where the author takes this series!
Happy Reading!
And on to that 80 days thing, I've written... (have to go check my word count...) 4,376 words. That is two things: First, the next short story in the Angelic Agents series. Can't get enough of Gideon and Samora. And of course, the sequel to Compis, which has no title yet, so I will call it the next in the Five Tribes series.
And now that we've moved past the business portion of the program, let's talk about my next indie review:
At this point in time, I have Marked by Kim Richardson on the agenda.
So Marked (book 1 in the Soul Guardians series, book 2 of which will be out in May, hopefully!) is the story of Kara Nightingale, a teenage artist living in what I assume to be Canada (which is an assumption, but there's a lot of French stuff around and the author is from Canada, soooo... I think it's a safe assumption). Up until the story starts she's lived with her crazy mom who says she sees demons and avoided making friends for the most part except Mathieu, the one guy who can seem to deal around her mom.
On her way to a major presentation of her work, one that could mean everything to her future career, she is hit by a bus and that is when the real story begins. Kara wakes up in an elevator, staring down a grumpy chimpanzee elevator attendant, and after realizing that she is stone cold dead, she is thrown into her new life as a Guardian Angel (GA).
This book is has one of the most interesting worlds I've read about in a long time. My mom found it confusing, but then again, she comes from a more strict religious background. There are several religious elements at play in the story, you have guardian angels, archangels, reincarnation(not in every case, though), the Chief (who I assume is God?) and of course, multiple levels of demons.
The GA's job is to in the best case, prevent their assigned case file from dying, at worst, save the souls from the dead mortal. The demon's job is ALWAYS to kill and eat the mortal's soul, thus making themselves more powerful, and to capture and eat the GAs, if they can.
Kara is a Rookie GA, meaning that she's in training and she's been assigned to David, super hot GA with a cocky charm and flirty wit. He takes her through all her first case files, teaches her the ins and outs of demon defense.
So that is the basic story. Without going into spoilers, my overall impressions. I liked the characters, David cracked me up, he was pretty funny. The author does some great jokes about his addiction to winking at pretty girls. Kara comes off more as a quiet girl with deep reserves of strength. She was much better to me than Meghan in the first book of the Iron Fey series. Kara didn't whine much, she felt understandable pain at her short life, but she also sucked it up and did her job as best as she could. I thought her reactions in situations were realistic and I didn't once think, "What the crap?" like I did when I read Hocking's first book in the Trylle Trilogy, where she discovers she is in love with the guy after like a WEEK. Seriously.
Let's talk about love here. What I really really liked about this book is even though the main characters liked each other, even though there is obviously a love interest hinted at, and some really great boy-girl moments, there is NO RUSH to declarations of love. That is my biggest pet peeve with YA books I've read lately. It used to be in a story that a high school girl met a high school boy and you know, they DATED for a while before they fell deeply in love for all of eternity. These characters were so normal and likeable in that respect. Very impressed on that note.
I also, having read a lot of more serious YA fantasy of late, appreciated some of the more lighthearted aspects of this book. The various simian elevator attendants were hilarious! Not to mention the forgetful oracle office workers.
My only wish for this first book in the series would have been more backstory on Kara's mother, her art(which seemed like a fascinating part of her former world that I would have like touched on) and more on her friendship with Mathieu. Like maybe some flashbacks?
Anyway, that's my review. This book gets four stars from me and I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel. Can't wait to see where the author takes this series!
Happy Reading!
Short Sunday and Word of Mouth (Yes, Again)
This has been a busy week for me. Formatting took longer than I thought. I blame Kindle. Do you know how impossible it is to put a table of contents into a mobi doc? Seriously, I hope they change this, because Kindle is not up to industry standards on this one. Consequently, after many hours of swearing and copious coding, it STILL doesn't have one. I'm pissed. Of course, if anyone buys it on B&N, it will have a table of contents. Because that's just easy peasy. But mobi wants a WHOLE OTHER html page, and it just will NOT link in. I'll figure it out eventually, even if I have to crack mobi open like an egg.
Anyway, enough bitching. hahaha This coming week will be a busy one for me because Compis is online and ready for people to buy it. I think it will be awhile, because it's not even searchable on goodreads yet, meaning, there is no way for the public to know about it. :) But it's there. I forgot to share the cover with you earlier. Here it is. Didn't my artist do a bang-up job?
Gorgeous! I'm so lucky!In other news, my book Six Keys will be featured on the website http://dailycheapreads.com/ on Tuesday, so that is exciting too. They just sent me an email about it yesterday. I'll probably comment on the results on Wed. check-in.My goal for this weeks 80 day writing campaign: Write every day. I've been getting up at 5:45, because with a kidlet, you don't get a lot of writing time, and I'm admittedly one of those annoying morning people. If I try to write at night, I read it the next day and I'm like... "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?!?!" So I avoid it at all costs, get up early, and go to bed early. I still want to get my novel done in the 80 days, but 30 days have passed, and I have barely anything written. Yes, I did write another short story in that time, but I'm anxious to get as much writing as I can done before this baby gets here. I'm hoping I'll get two books written. That way I can work on editing and releasing them when I'm up at 4 in the morning. hahaha
New Subject: Word of Mouth. So I was in the library last week, because kidlet needed a new stack of books of his own to read (yes, we are readers in this house!) and while my son was playing on the little computers they have there, I inched over to the YA section and started looking over their "new books". There were two girls in there, working on a homework assignment (they were trying to figure out how to spell polio, so I can only assume that's what it was). Most of the books I had read already, but the book Shiver caught my eye and I picked it up to read the blurb on the back."Oh my God," said a voice behind me. "You HAVE to read that book!"I looked back and one of the teens was staring at me earnestly. "This one?" I asked, holding it up."It's like my all time favorite book. It's scary good! You have to read it, you'll love it," she said, nodding her head."Okay, thanks," I said, and walked out with it.
My point? I LOVE READERS. Seriously. I know we were in the library, but how many times have I seen someone reading a book in a coffee place or at the park and stopped to talk about it? I feel like, as a reader, I have this wonderful community of people around me, who can't wait to tell me what they liked and didn't about a given book. It's amazing. Yet another reason I love goodreads. I know I plug them all the time, but I can't help myself, they are a wonderful website. I don't know what I'd do without them.
Thank you, readers of books, for your recommends. I'll be sure to pass it on!
Anyway, enough bitching. hahaha This coming week will be a busy one for me because Compis is online and ready for people to buy it. I think it will be awhile, because it's not even searchable on goodreads yet, meaning, there is no way for the public to know about it. :) But it's there. I forgot to share the cover with you earlier. Here it is. Didn't my artist do a bang-up job?
Gorgeous! I'm so lucky!In other news, my book Six Keys will be featured on the website http://dailycheapreads.com/ on Tuesday, so that is exciting too. They just sent me an email about it yesterday. I'll probably comment on the results on Wed. check-in.My goal for this weeks 80 day writing campaign: Write every day. I've been getting up at 5:45, because with a kidlet, you don't get a lot of writing time, and I'm admittedly one of those annoying morning people. If I try to write at night, I read it the next day and I'm like... "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?!?!" So I avoid it at all costs, get up early, and go to bed early. I still want to get my novel done in the 80 days, but 30 days have passed, and I have barely anything written. Yes, I did write another short story in that time, but I'm anxious to get as much writing as I can done before this baby gets here. I'm hoping I'll get two books written. That way I can work on editing and releasing them when I'm up at 4 in the morning. hahaha
New Subject: Word of Mouth. So I was in the library last week, because kidlet needed a new stack of books of his own to read (yes, we are readers in this house!) and while my son was playing on the little computers they have there, I inched over to the YA section and started looking over their "new books". There were two girls in there, working on a homework assignment (they were trying to figure out how to spell polio, so I can only assume that's what it was). Most of the books I had read already, but the book Shiver caught my eye and I picked it up to read the blurb on the back."Oh my God," said a voice behind me. "You HAVE to read that book!"I looked back and one of the teens was staring at me earnestly. "This one?" I asked, holding it up."It's like my all time favorite book. It's scary good! You have to read it, you'll love it," she said, nodding her head."Okay, thanks," I said, and walked out with it.
My point? I LOVE READERS. Seriously. I know we were in the library, but how many times have I seen someone reading a book in a coffee place or at the park and stopped to talk about it? I feel like, as a reader, I have this wonderful community of people around me, who can't wait to tell me what they liked and didn't about a given book. It's amazing. Yet another reason I love goodreads. I know I plug them all the time, but I can't help myself, they are a wonderful website. I don't know what I'd do without them.
Thank you, readers of books, for your recommends. I'll be sure to pass it on!
