Author: Katie L. Carroll (Page 10 of 144)

How a Writer Rests (or Not)

December 13, 2021 / Katie L. Carroll

After a writing whirlwind of a November with a couple of virtual events, my Highlights Foundation writing retreat, and successfully completing NaNoWriMo (you can read about that in my post “The Magic of Highlights Foundation Writing Retreat”), I had planned to take a bit of a breather in December. November left me feeling a bit burnt out, so my plan was to watch some lighthearted movies, catch up on pleasure reading, and maybe bake a little with the kiddos. I also wanted to play around creatively with painting my playing guitar, things that had been put aside last month.

Overall, I’m doing pretty well on those goals. I have just one article due this month, so things are quiet on the freelance side. I haven’t done any fiction writing except for tooling around with one picture book and jotting down a few notes for when I gear up to revise the young adult novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo.

I’ve watched a bunch of movies, done some reading but I’d like to do more, and a little bit of baking with more planned for once the kiddos are on their school break. The painting and guitar playing I’ve been less successful on, but I’m trying to keep those things low-key, so I’m okay with that.

So I seem to be doing well on my goal, except…I got an idea on how to develop one of my writing projects and I kind of ran with it. (I know I’m being annoyingly vague here, but more details will be coming on this.) It’s stretching me in new ways on the business side of things and it’s hit a few bumps along the way, adding some stress to my life. Which wasn’t in the plan for December, and maybe all of this could have waited until after the New Year.

But I also didn’t want to wait on it, so I’m just decided to go for it. It hasn’t really been time-consuming so much as uncomfortable as I do things that are new to me. It’s made me feel unbalanced when I was striving for more balance this month. In the end, I think it’s going to be really good. So while it has put a wrench in my relaxing plans for this month, it always feels good to move feel like I’m making progress.

I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m very good at taking a full break. We’ll call it a break-ish. What are you all doing/celebrating as we close out this year and look forward to a new one?

The Magic of a Highlights Foundation Writing Retreat

November 29, 2021 / Katie L. Carroll

Quick reminder that there are just a couple of days left to get 10% my entire catalogue of books using code NOVEMBER10. Just go to the Purchase Books page and I’ll ship them directly to you. All books are signed with an option to personalize, and all purchases come with fun book swag!

For those of you who have been followers of my blog for awhile, you may remember the last time I went to the Highlights Foundation or a writing retreat and wrote “Highlights Foundation Unworkshop: A Little Creepy, A Lot Productive.” My writing friend Katlyn Duncan and I enjoyed it so much, we scheduled one for the following fall.

Then COVID happened and we had to put the trip on hold, but we finally made back early this month! And it was amazing!!! Yes, amazing with three exclamation points.

With this retreat scheduled for early November and me just starting a draft of my latest young adult novel, all the stars aligned for me to attempt National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo (for short) occurs in November and a bunch of writers attempt to draft a book (i.e. write 50,000 words) in 30 days. It’s an intense experience, and one I was not in a position to attempt in recent years.

This year, I stayed in Cooper’s Cottage, which was a bright and airy cabin full of Floyd Cooper’s illustrations and with a view of the hiking path. It was not haunted, though one of the other writers I was on the retreat with stayed in my old cabin, and (spoiler alert) that one is still haunted. I actually didn’t write much in my cabin because I was retreating with three other writers this year and we mostly wrote in common spaces or in one of the other cabins (but not the haunted one!).

As I said, it was an amazing trip, and I highly recommend a Highlights retreat for all of you creative types. I wrote a ton of words and set myself up for successfully completing my NaNoWriMo challenge (as of November 28 when I’m writing this, I’m at 47, 250 words for the month and on track to finish on time). There’s much to be said of having everything taken care of for you so you have the brain space to only think of writing.

As a teaser for what I’m working on, I composed this poem in the Highlights word garden. As you can see, it’s kind of an intense story, but I’m really pleased with how it’s coming out. Though there will be a ton of revisions to come.

dark and light
scream within
the storm
Katie L. Carroll

My retreat mates are all vloggers, so you can check out their videos about the experience below. I kind of hate making videos myself, so I’ll be sticking to this old blog for now.

Deal Alert: November Discount on Katie L. Carroll’s Books

November 1, 2021 / Katie L. Carroll

Remember how back in the beginning of the pandemic there was a shortage of toilet paper and since then there have been various shortages of certain items? That’s happening now with physical books.

The supply chain issues regarding books can’t totally be blamed on the pandemic (this problem has been years in the making, see “Looking for Answers to Supply Chain Challenges” by Michael Seidlinger), but the bottom line is there is a shortage of physical books.

While publishers are pushing back release dates and paper is in short supply, you don’t have to worry because I have all of my books in stock. For the entire month of November, you can get signed copies of my books at a 10% discount when you use code NOVEMBER10 at checkout on the Purchase Books page.

Signed and personalized books make for great gifts, and I have choices for all the young readers in your life! My picture book THE BEDTIME KNIGHT is a fun read aloud where young kiddos can participate by seeing what is revealed in the illustrations. For the 8-12 crowd, PIRATE ISLAND has pirate treasure and a cursed island (and a little real history thrown in there for good measure). My YA fantasies, the award-winning ELIXIR BOUND and ELIXIR SAVED, are perfect for teens or fantasy loving adults.

This discount is running through the end of November so I can make sure to get them all mailed off in time for the December holidays. All orders come with a bonus bookmark or sticker, customized to the book(s) you’re ordering. Buying direct from me also means that you’re supporting a small business!

What Nonfiction Picture Books Teach Us About How Rich A Billionaire Is

October 19, 2021 / Katie L. Carroll

Despite the seemingly unrelated headline, this is in fact the third installment of posts about space exploration. To further understand my stance on the first space exploration post of “Let’s Stop the Billionaires from Controlling Space Exploration”, I think it’s important to look at exactly how much a billionaire is and who are the billionaires that are trying to corner the market on space exploration.

Whenever I want to explore a complicated topic I’m unfamiliar with, the first place I turn to are non-fiction or informational fiction picture books (check out “Nonfiction vs. Informational Fiction vs. Narrative Nonfiction: What’s the Diff?” by Wendy Hinote Lanier for more about these different categories of children’s books). If you want a concept explained in an engaging, uncomplicated way, a picture book is where it’s at!

To understand how much a billion really is, I turned to the book MILLIONS, BILLIONS, & TRILLIONS: UNDERSTANDING BIG NUMBERS by David A. Adler, illustrated by Edward Miller. (My kids really enjoyed this book, too!)

A billion (that’s 1,000,000,000) is one thousand million. In the book, it says in order to count to one billion, “at a rate of one number per second without stopping, it would take you almost thirty-two years to reach one billion.”

The book also says, “Someone with one billion dollars could give away ten million dollars every year for one hundred years.” That’s only one billion…imagine having $177 billion dollars, which according to Forbes 2021 Billionaire List was the net worth of richest person Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and “space” explorer, at the beginning of 2021, up $64 billion from his 2020 net worth of $113 billion.

On this same list Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, was listed at the second-richest person with $151 billion net worth. An article from earlier this month, “Elon Musk trolls Jeff Bezos as he widens his lead as the richest person on Earth” by Ramishah Maruf, now has Musk leading the charge with $222 billion. So while we were all working on the front lines or from home and helping our kids learn virtually during this pandemic, these guys were making billions and billions of dollars.

According to the 2021 Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report, the top 1.1% of people control 45.8% of wealth in the world. A report in June by ProPublica analyzed IRS data and found that the richest 25 Americans actual pay a very low tax rate when comparing their wealth to how much they paid in taxes (see “Richest 25 Americans have a ‘true tax rate’ of almost nothing: Report” by Aimee Picchi). So most of the wealth is controlled by very few people, and those people aren’t even contributing their fair amount to society.

Two of the billionaires I’ve been talking about in regards to space travel paid zero taxes some years. Jeff Bezos paid zero federal income tax in 2007 and 2011, and Elon Musk paid zero federal income tax in 2018. In 2020, the median income for an Amazon (of which Bezos was CEO) employee was $29,007, while that year Bezos’s Amazon income was 58 times that at $1,681,840.

I know I’m throwing a lot of numbers around in this post. If those don’t interest you or convince you that these massively wealthy guys don’t exactly play fair and shouldn’t be in charge of something as important as space exploration, then maybe their ideas about space might convince you. Unfortunately that would make this a very long post, so stick around and I’ll be exploring that topic next.

Reintroduction and Updates on Author Katie L. Carroll

October 4, 2021 / Katie L. Carroll

Author Katie L. Carroll at the CT Renaissance Faire, cosplaying as Yeselda, witch of Faway Forest, from the Elixir Chronicles.

Welcome to my blog! I have some new followers that I met at the CT Renaissance Faire, so I thought I’d reintroduce myself and my website. I generally post about twice a month, so you won’t be spammed with a million posts from me. I like to introduce myself by saying I write books for young people and those who are young at heart, and you can visit my Author Bio page to learn more about me.

I would be remiss not to also send a big thanks to all my long-time followers who have stuck with me these many years I’ve been blogging. I checked and discovered that my very first blog post was dated May 26, 2008! Every few years I wonder if I should keep blogging, but it seems that I’ll be continuing this venture of mine for awhile still.

The blog space is where I share updates about anything important going on with my books, like teasers and thoughts about my works-in-progress, any new releases or sale prices on my books (stay tuned in the coming weeks for news on sales), and upcoming events. You can learn more about books by clicking on the Books tab on my website and you can buy signed books directly from me by going to the Purchase Books tab.

I also post about things that are on my mind, often related to what I’ve been writing. I have an ongoing series of posts about space exploration and one of my favorite past series of posts was about females in YA. There is the occasional guest post from a fellow author, artist, or creative type or a post that includes pictures of my kiddos and our adventures.

I love connecting with readers and other writers here and welcome comments, so if there’s something particular you’d like me to write about, please do let me know. My Author Visits page and Events page are good places to check out if you want to connect with me further. For those of you interested in the publishing side of writing, I have Self-Publishing Resources as well.