K.M. Carroll's Blog, page 34

How worry steals your magic

It’s July National Novel Writer’s Month! Props to all my frantic writer peeps who are taking time out of vacation to scribble out random stories.

To get into the creation mood, I’ve been listening to all my brain-food music. One of them is Return to Pooh Corner by Kenny Loggins. I listened to it over and over as a teen while composing tons of crazy fanfics.

You know how listening to music can make those mental connections, and place you right back into a time and place where you last heard it? It also can have really powerful emotional connections. For me, it was like a snapshot of my mental state as a super-creative teen.

I lived in a world of good and evil, fantastic adventure, and heart-tearing drama. This album was some of the backdrop. I lived in Neverland, where once you’ve been there, you can never grow old. This was my land of pure imagination. I didn’t worry about genre or market. With fanfics, you don’t have to worry about that stuff anyway–it’s all built in. My plots were bonkers, but so fun.

Floating Island by Bezduch

But things changed.

I’ve spent the last decade learning to be afraid. Learning to worry. Learning all those dark, negative things that help you survive adulthood–but they cut off your shining Neverland. In its place, I built a narrow, dystopian world of darkness and fear.

Dark fantasy landscape concept by FPesantez

I didn’t realize how far I’ve come until I put on Kenny Loggins and revisited that snapshot of how the inside of my head used to look. I want to go back to being that intense, happy person. I think my kids would like her. So I’ve been trying to be thankful, like Habakkuk:

Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.

In which I turn people into catpeople

To celebrate the upcoming launch of Magic Weaver, I asked for volunteers on Facebook. “Who wants to become a cat person?” I asked.

“Me! Me!” several people shouted.

So, without further ado, here are the victims volunteers with cat ears, and in some cases, tails.

This is Heidi, and here is her blog
Juliann Whicker, and this is her blog
Ryan Perreault, and here is his Facebook


Bethany Jennings, and here is her blog
Jennette Mbewe, and here is her blog
Rachel Meenan, and here is her website
Gretchen’s daughter, who wanted to be a catgirl!

Ah, Photoshopping is so much fun! Here’s to all my volunteers!

Magic Weaver cover reveal (and book 1 free!)

I’m jittery with nervousness about this new book’s launch! You’d think that the more books you write, the easier it gets, but it doesn’t.

Here’s the cover:

It’s the fourth book of the Spacetime Legacy, my YA urban fantasy series. It’s been a long time coming, mostly because this particular plotline gave me all kinds of headaches. This is what it’s about:

As a catgirl from another world, Xironi Heartlight spent her childhood trying to blend in with Earth’s humans. She lives with her grandfather in a huge house he expanded with magic, and earns her living by weaving space into tapestries on her magic loom.

When her friend Carda asks for her help to investigate a series of magical thefts, Xironi is caught up in the twisted schemes of an imprisoned sorcerer, and Alatha, the cutthroat politician he has forced to obey his every command. An innocent girl is taking the fall for it – Revi, the ex-assassin Carda has been training in magic.

Now Xironi and Revi, together with Carda and his friends, must hunt down and capture Alatha’s probability ghosts from multiple timelines so that Xironi can weave them back together – before Alatha’s final strike brings the fury of an otherworldly race upon them all.

The bit with Alatha being cut into probability ghosts has been around since book 1. It was just such a huge plotline that we had to give it its own book.

Another thing that stumped me on this book was that it’s a friendship between two girls. Having never had a close girl friendship beyond my sister, I had to read and study what that looks like, and how it works. All those years writing fanfic, and I never wrote two girls who are friends! This was a new frontier for me.

Thankfully I have lovely internet friends who have been willing to point me in the right direction, and correct me when I go astray. Props to Bethany, Rachel, and Mary for critiques, edits, and all-around cheerleading.

The book will launch Tuesday, July 5th, and is available for preorder here. In the meantime, book 1 of the series is free on all retailers! Why not grab it and give it a read? I’ll be dropping the price of the other books soon, so you can grab the whole series for a song.

Need help writing urban settings? We got your back!

I’m participating in the launch event for the Urban Settings Thesaurus this week! This is the newest addition to the Emotion/Setting/everything else thesauri by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi–and it’s fantastic.

I’ve been reading a review copy … well, you don’t exactly read a reference guide straight through. I’ve been referring to it heavily as I work the final drafts on Magic Weaver, and it is a goldmine. Never been in a police station, a tattoo parlor, and office cubicle, a military base, or a newsroom? But your characters have to go there? This book is crammed with all the sensory details and conflict ideas you could ask for.

So, without further ado, here’s the scoop!

It is a writer’s job to draw readers into the fictional story so completely that they forget the real world. Our goal is to render them powerless, so despite the late hour, mountain of laundry, or workday ahead, they cannot give up the journey unfolding within the paper-crisp pages before them.

Strong, compelling writing comes down to the right words, in the right order. Sounds easy, but as all writers know, it is anything BUT. So how do we create this storytelling magic? How can we weave description in such a way that the fictional landscape becomes authentic and real—a mirror of the reader’s world in all the ways that count most?

Well, there’s some good news on that front. Two new books have released this week that may change the description game for writers. The Urban Setting Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to City Spaces and The Rural Setting Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Personal and Natural Spaces look at the sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds a character might experience within 225 different contemporary settings. And this is only the start of what these books offer writers.

In fact, swing by and check out this hidden entry from the Urban Setting Thesaurus: Police Car.

And there’s one more thing you might want to know more about….

Becca and Angela, authors of The Emotion Thesaurus, are celebrating their double release with a fun event going on from June 13-20th called ROCK THE VAULT. At the heart of Writers Helping Writers is a tremendous vault, and these two ladies have been hoarding prizes of epic writerly proportions.

A safe full of prizes, ripe for the taking…if the writing community can work together to unlock it, of course.

Ready to do your part? Stop by Writers Helping Writers to find out more!

The real reason that Christians don’t read fantasy

There’s been an ongoing discussion in the Christian speculative-fiction community about why nobody can sell books. This discussion has gone on for years. “Look at our awesome fantasy!” authors cry. “Look at our amazing science fiction! Why doesn’t anybody want to read it?”

The Christians don’t want to read it, and the non-Christians don’t want to read it. So a lot of head-scratching goes on in the community. “What are we doing wrong?”

Stephen Burnett over at SpeculativeFaith.com wrote an article about this. He postulated:

—–

Q. Why isn’t there more Christian fantasy?

Answer 1: There has been, but it failed.

I know many Christian editors and authors who did or do publish fantastical titles, e.g. supernatural/fantasy/sci-fi. And that effort went over like a dead drone. Not because the publishers were not willing. But because the readership did not respond.

Without exception, the Christian fantastical titles I enjoyed in the 90s and 2000s3 are now out of print at their original publishers. Some, such as Oxygen and the Firebird series, ended up being republished by Marcher Lord Press, now known as Enclave, which is now an imprint of Gilead Publishing.

Answer 2: There is, but you haven’t heard of it.

Some Christian authors who tried fantasy/sci-fi at larger publishers ended up jumping genres. Or they moved into indie or self-publishing. In some Christian circles, this means even less opportunity for the Ministry platforms a traditional publisher might afford.

Even apart from that, you likely haven’t heard of an author’s self- or indie-published works.

From here it appears that a new author must be able to  be a full-time author/marketer to work at making a living from being a full-time author/marketer. Catch-22?

3. There is, but readers aren’t there.

This question is not about the writers/publishers not giving the supply.

It’s about readers and what they demand.

That’s why I overtly push against the “why don’t Christian publishers and writers do X” line. Fact is: Christian publishers and writers have done X, and readers did not respond.

I’ve begun to wonder, among some of the “Christian fantasy” circles I know, whether some writers simply do not know of the many, many writers and publishers who have tried this, and are therefore led to conclude “Well, someone should try it,” e.g. reinventing the wheel.

After I wrote this material, an editor with a Christian publishing house commented:

It’s not that publishers haven’t tried to publish speculative fiction before, but the Christian readers didn’t respond to it. I actually have on my desk a fantasy trilogy that [my publisher] did in 2007; no one bought it and it’s out of print now.

And while Christian publishers definitely should be more willing to take risks, Christian readers (and Christian stores, even in the age of Amazon it’s actually amazing how much they influence what gets published) have often punished those who took risks. That’s why we’re stuck in a never-ending vortex of Amish Romance (and now coloring books).

So, Christians don’t want speculative fiction. I guess because speculation often looks a lot like heresy–and the church has dealt with that particular nastiness for centuries. But I noticed something different.

Dusk by Sandara

While reading a homeschooling blog, I came across a blog for Christian homeschoolers who write books. These kids and young adults are voracious readers and writers. They consume Redwall, Narnia, the Warriors series, historical fiction (anything Little House on the Prairie), and fairytales. Lots of fairytales.

All these books have something in common: they are safe. Juvenile fiction has no sex, no swearing, and lots of adventure. Sound familiar? Why, yes–it’s all the same thing that adult Christian readers continue to read.

And thus it dawned on me: to successfully market to an audience, you have to know your audience. And the Christian readership wants children’s fiction. It’s why the church hasn’t moved past Narnia or Middle Earth (both written in the early part of the last century). Occasionally someone mentions Frank Peretti or Chuck Black. Very occasionally someone might bring up Andrew Peterson. But mostly kids are allowed to read mystery, talking animal adventure, and historical fiction. These kids then grow into adults who prefer to read the same things. They’re not interested in the darker, edgier fiction out there.

However, the Christian spec fic authors want to read and write adult books. They want sex, swearing and blood–all things that aren’t appropriate for kids books. Yet they also try to drag in the heavy-handed moralizing that is native to a lot of kids fiction. The result is a mishmash that doesn’t appeal to adult readers of speculative fiction (too heavy handed on the moralizing), and doesn’t appeal to the Christian camp (too dirty!). And let’s not even mention horror.

Mike Duran in this video blog suggests that we drop the Christian moniker and just write pure speculative fiction. That way we can hit the adult market that wants the adult content we so badly want to write. We do have to learn to convey complex ideas without moralizing, but isn’t that part of growing as a writer?

The Legacy of Spacetime (or How We Survived Long-Distance Dating)

Back in my fanfic days (discussed here), I hosted lots of people’s stories on my website. One of them was a guy named Ryan Carroll.

While reading fanfics, I learned to judge people by what they wrote or drew–particularly their self-inserts. If a person’s sert was psycho, or stuck-up, or really nice, so was the writer. Ryan’s sert was always really nice–a fun-loving nerd who found a way to travel to other worlds.

An old Carda profile pic

We were friends from high school, through college, and on into our 20s. I was friends with lots of people online, but Ryan was the one I had multiple crushes on–and I only knew him as words on a screen.

As we got older, he took his stories and characters and began stripping away the fanfiction aspects, building these characters into their own fantasy world. We had long conversations about Carda, Xironi, Demetrius, and how the angeli differed from real angels. We hammered out how to make an adoptable robot pet from GaiaOnline into a character. (“Let’s name her Esca, after Escaflowne!”)

We started writing story episodes together. I invented Indal, the chronomancer werewolf, because there was a sad lack of werewolves in Ryan’s universe. There also weren’t many male characters–he had loads of girls, though. (And I had loads of guys!)

Indal working a time-scrying spell while trying not to shift into a werewolf.

We came up with the Strider of Chronos idea while writing these stories. Originally we had Carda finding out about it through a series of secret journals that were hidden across multiple worlds. We had this nasty thing called the Subspace Storm that changed every time we wrote about it. Sometimes it was an actual storm. Sometimes it was a disembodied soul disrupting the space between dimensions. Once it was the perpetually exploding home world of the cat people.

Meanwhile, we slowly went from emails to phone calls. We met in real life, which was awkward, but kind of fun. We kept building the Spacetime world. One particular episode, when the Subspace Storm sank Atlantis, was especially fun to write. I’m still sorry that it didn’t make it into the finished book.

You can see how bonkers and unfocused the storyworld was.

Time went on. We got engaged long-distance, and aside from a few holidays spent together, we lived in separate states until a week before the wedding. It was awful. I don’t recommend it.

Once married, we took long walks together and continued developing the world. “What about Demetrius?” I asked. “There’s got to be more to him than a mustache-twirling bad guy.”

At the time, the main series villain was Octavian, and Demetrius was this demon-dude that he summoned all the time.

Fear me and my un-originality!

We combined the two characters, and figured out that Demetrius was in love with the fallen angelus Inferna. They did the whole Adam and Eve thing–she sinned first, and he followed her lead. He may wind up as an antihero in the final book, though. Ryan and I are quite fond of him.

We decided to turn this into a fantasy novel. I took Ryan’s notes and old drafts and began writing it. A couple of drafts in, I found a lovely little critique group called the Sandbox. Everybody there at the time has moved on to being published, or very close to it. We were a hungry bunch, and happily brutal on each other’s work. I learned how much I didn’t know, and began consuming craft books. They introduced me to James Scott Bell, among others. Cue heavenly choir here.

I also tried my hand at Nanowrimo, or National Novel Writer’s Month. This gave rise to the second and third books, both of which took several rewrites to distill the story from the fluff.

There was also a proto book 2, involving blood magic, a dragon, and a really big, angry robot–but it had so many problems that I scrapped it. I reused a few elements for the upcoming fourth Spacetime book. (I couldn’t leave the giant robot idea alone.)

Ryan, meanwhile, has been brainstorming the second Spacetime series (we’re calling it Season Two), which will follow the Spacetime War and a batch of new characters. The old characters will show up, of course.

An early cover idea for book 1. It’s too dark, but still very epic.

All in all, Spacetime has taught me so much about writing. I’ve done plenty of things wrong, but then, that’s how experiments are. (Apparently the one I got very right was Chronocrime, because one of my friends goes back and reads it every year.)

The fourth book, which I hope to launch in June, is called Magic Weaver, and features the catgirl Xironi, and how she weaves space into portal-tapestries. She befriends Revi, the heroine of Wraithblade, and together they have all sorts of crazy adventures. There are robots. There is a tiny white dragon. There is a person who has had their free will removed by taking all probabilities out of their timeline.

Ryan and I are excited for this book, because it leads straight into book five, the series finale called Inferna’s Fury. Clues as to what will happen are scattered throughout the earlier books.

The first three books are (hooray!) available on all retailers. I’m so excited! It’s been such a long road with this series. Check them out! The Strider of Chronos, Chronocrime, Wraithblade, and the upcoming Magic Weaver.

Vitamins, minerals (and how mostly they suck)

Ever since we started taking our high-quality supplements last year, I’ve gotten used to feeling healthy. No allergies, few colds. The only thing I get now are the big nasty bugs during flu season.

The Legend of Biff

The thing about good health is that you take it for granted. You get up and go about your day, you eat what you like (within reason–avoid gluten and sugar like the plague). You go to bed at night and sleep like a baby. The health part of your life works like a well-oiled machine, and you don’t think about it.

Like the doctrine of grace, life is a list of Dos. Do your chores, do the things that need to be done, do enjoy your life, do have fun, do smile a lot.

Then one day, you run out of supplements.

I ordered more, but I’m cheap and use standard shipping, which takes a week.

You know why people think vitamins and minerals don’t work? Because the stuff you get at the drugstore does NOTHING. Our medicine cabinet is stuffed with multivitamins–men’s, women’s, prenatals, weird samples the doctor gave me, and so on.

Investigation of the labels reveals tiny doses of about twelve vitamins and minerals. A good one might have twenty.

You know how many vitamins and minerals the human body needs?

Ninety. 9-0. That’s the correct ratios of vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, plus trace minerals that act as co-factors. For instance, vitamin C does nothing without calcium. Iron does nothing without copper. Plus you gotta have the Omega oils, which work in concert with the vits and minerals.

So I’m popping double doses of everything in the cabinet. Absolutely nothing happens. I suspect that they’re such low-quality pills that they go straight through.

My health begins to deteriorate. First is fatigue and brain fog. I walk around like a zombie.

Next is allergies. Then indigestion. I can’t eat a darn thing without my stomach reacting violently. Only vegetables seem to tame the beast a little. And remember, this is mostly gluten and sugar free! If I touch either of those, pick a symptom from The Wheel of Suck. Actually, pick five.

Next comes the canker sores in my mouth. Because those are always fun.

My chronic anemia returns. I can’t draw a full breath, and my legs twitch badly at night in that creepy leg moving syndrome.

Then comes my old friend, the urinary tract infection. It stays for days and weeks. I take cranberry pills. I drink lemon juice. I sit on hot water bottles. I really don’t want to go on antibiotics, but after days of suffering, it looks pretty attractive.

The list of things I can eat and do begins to shrink. This is Law–a list of don’ts. It gets longer and longer. Don’t eat sugar, honey, tea, any fruit, most meat, any grains whatsoever, slightly breaded chicken … it all causes headaches, stomach aches, and other awful things.

Then … Cue the angelic choir … My good supplements arrive.

Serra Angel by Kaiz0

Within two days the brain fog and fatigue are gone. Within three days the urinary tract infection is gone. Within four days the allergies, stomach problems, and canker sores are gone. The anemia and leg twitches vanish.

My hormones calm down–PMS disappears. My mood defaults to Cheerful because I feel so darn good. I go back to eating all the foods I couldn’t eat (except gluten and sugar). Grace rules once more.

I’ve talked about this supplement before and why it’s so good. I now understand why nobody believes me. Did you know that the FDA doesn’t regulate supplements? In fact, nobody regulates them. That’s why most of them suck. Having spent a week mixing and matching our inferior drugstore brands and getting zero benefit, I feel desperately sorry for everyone around me.

My cockatiel is old and sick. He had stopped chirping or moving very much. I got him a bottle of liquid supplements, and he cheered right up. Guess what! There’s more vitamins and minerals in the bird drops than in ANY of my multivitamins. Only my really good supplement has more.

Law and grace–do and don’t. Good health and bad. It’s so weird to see a spiritual doctrine so closely paralleled in the health sphere. The law can’t save, no matter how strictly we follow it. Only grace saves. And there are so many counterfeits–its hard to tell the fakes from the real thing.

Storing Force: The Power of Habit

When I was on vacation last week, my mom gave me a stack of stuff to read. One of them was a book of articles (blog posts from before blogging).

One was a fascinating article from the 1800s about habit. This doctor had observed how the more often a person does something, the easier it becomes to do again. Science has recently discovered this very thing in our neurons.

However, this doctor took the concept of habit in an interesting direction: that of force. I believe that she was talking about energy–you get up in the morning, and spend your force, or energy, over the course of the day.

Now, if your life has a series of good habits in it, this saves you a lot of energy. Things like getting up, showering, brushing your teeth, cooking meals at certain times, cleaning house–all these are good habits. They expend force. However, a person who has never consigned these menial tasks to habits must exert more force in order to accomplish them. They reach the end of the day with nothing left over.

The article then went on to talk about storing force. You store force by enjoying the moment, and by sitting and thinking, by having times of rest throughout your day. This is when you convert your force to a higher form, and it is used to bless and enrich those around you.

Crater Lake from Interfacelift

This really spoke to me. While I try to leverage habit or routine, I never, ever sit and store up force. I rarely take time to rest and think. If I have a quiet moment, out comes the device, and on goes the Internet. More energy is siphoned away by Facebook than anything else.

This week, I’ve tried to keep the household running on a routine, and have rest periods without Internet. And do you know, it’s been really pleasant. I had gotten frantic and angry, and wasted my force chasing the kids around, and lugging around the baby. This week it occurred to me that if the baby is old enough to scoot on her tummy and work on crawling, she’s old enough for an enforced nap time. Suddenly she’s much happier. I have more free time. I’m calmer. Habit wins the day again!

I find that writing works best if automated by habit. If I make it a habit to write or edit for an hour every night after the kids are in bed, it adds up. I can finish three books a year that way. The best thing is, if I have those few hours of quiet, I can store up force better. It helps me to think, and refreshes me with a better mood the next day.

Have you ever heard of “force” as applies to your energy level and exertion? Have you leveraged the power of habit to help run your life more smoothly?

A birthday hotdog roast

We went to California last week for my daughter’s 7th birthday. All of my extended family lives out there, so CA is where we go when it’s time to party. Lots of pictures (and captions) following!

The long drive through the desert. Such a pretty day! And the desert was so green!
Grandma making friends with the 2-year-old.
Everybody roasting hotdogs. There were many, many wiener jokes.
“Why are these taking so long to cook?”
The kid table, filled with hungry kiddos.
Ahh, the typical American family–all sitting with their devices. Note the cunning use of umbrellas in the background.
Lighting the candles on the ice cream cake.
Dramatic action shot of birthday candle ownage!
After dinner, the kids played Detective with an obliging uncle.
My sis-in-law Makenzie is a professional photographer, and took a lot of these pictures. Like this one.
Family photo–silly faces edition!
Driving home was smooth sailing until we entered Arizona. There a giant storm awaited us. This is us driving into it. I didn’t take pictures of the hail and lightning because I was afraid we’d die if I took my eyes off the road.
The dust was blowing like crazy here. Not sure if the camera captured it.

And that’s a brief photographic summary of our trip. It was so much fun! Big families are the best.