Kate McIntyre's Blog, page 10

Getting Out of the Labyrinth: Part 2 – Outlining

This is a continuation of my series on The Labyrinth, that monstrous impossible maze so many of us writers get stuck in during our inbetween years. Last week, I talked about phase 1 of any novel, planning. You can read the five things I learned about planning while writing my first novel (The Deathsniffer’s Assistant, available this summer!) in this blog here.

Today I’ll be talking about the second phase of writing a novel, outlining. This is a long one because I think this stage is so importa...

Meet Some Amazing Rescue Sweethearts

There are two fine little ladies in this picture. The roly poly bald one is me, at about fifteen months. And the cutie wearing the exact same facial expression is Toby, the rescue dog my parents brought home as a sweet puppy months before I was even conceived.

Toby was a beautiful, sweet-tempered, playful little dog. No one could even guess at her breed. There was probably some collie in there. She was friendly and she listened well, and even my friends who were afraid of dogs loved little Tob...

Getting Out of the Labyrinth: Part 1 – Planning

(This is a continuation of the ideas I started exploring in this post.)

It’s hard to say where I “got the idea” for my first novel, The Deathsniffer’s Assistant, available this July. It’s not so much an idea that I “got” as an idea I’ve always had.

I learned to read by eating through all one hundred plus volumes of Nancy Drew. I developed a real love for the traditional whodunnit from that girl detective, and I’ve kept it my whole life. Even as my interest drifted from mystery fiction to fantas...

The Labyrinth

I’ve pretty much been writing since I was born.

My first novel was finished when I was seven years old. It was done up on an old clackety type-writer with a rogue e that made it awfully hard to read. It was about a detective agency full of rodents who solved kidnappings. The concept was clearly cribbed from Disney’s Saturday morning cartoon, Chip N’ Dale: Rescue Rangers. The actual characters were based on a colouring book page that I really liked and created a backstory for, which lead to the...

Changing Paradigms

I’ve had a blog for a few months, now. Every time I get on my computer, I think – darn! I should really update my blog! After all, maintaining a blog is an important part of being an author in this modern age. You need a blog because you need a brand. If you don’t have a brand, you won’t sell books. I’m staring down a July release date on my first novel, and I don’t have a brand to speak of.

Back up.

Well, I do have a brand. Or rather, I did have a brand. 2004 was a hell of a time, and I was ri...