Author: Katie L. Carroll (Page 115 of 142)

Signs of Spring

March 31, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

Here in New England you never can use temperatures to decide what time of year it is. With a warmer than average winter (bad for allergies and getting rid of bugs, but a nice break after last year’s crazy winter), it seems like spring has been around for months.

I know better than to let an 80-degree day in March fake me out with a premature promise of summer. An April snowstorm is always a possibility. Just today it was rainy and damp and cold outside. There’s other ways to tell spring is here, though.

For one the birds are back. I spied a crow taunting a squirrel. The crow clutched what appeared to be a long reed of dried grass in its mouth. The squirrel got real close to the reed, only to have the crow fly out of reach. Then the crow landed back on the grass and let the squirrel approach. With a squawk, the crow hopped away again. This went on for some time, much to my amusement (those pesky squirrels are always stealing my unripe tomatoes, taking one bite, and leaving the rest for me to find) and much to the squirrel’s dismay. I’ve also has a particular blue jay that seems to have made a nest in the forsythia bushes on the edge of the yard. And the distinct who-who-who lament of the mourning dove is back.

On Thursday, the hubby, the bro, The Boy, and I had our first ice-cream-for-dinner event at the Sundae House. The giant sign on their building reads, “It Must Be Spring, We’re Open!” Signs never lie, so you know that it really must be spring!

On Friday as I was leaving work I drove toward what from afar looked like a couple of misplaced lawn chairs blocking the driveway. Turns out, it was a tom turkey strutting its stuff and peacocking (let me just point out what a fun word “peacocking” is) as it tried to court an indifferent lady turkey.

Lastly and most definitively I know it’s spring because the little pea seeds are sprouting in their trays. My mom and dad both stopped by the house and saw the too-tall-for-trays pea plants on my kitchen counter and (independently of each other) said, “You’ve got to get those in the ground!”

What signs of spring have you seen lately?

WIP Wednesday

March 14, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

Ummm..it’s the second Wednesday of the month…and this is my first blog post of the month…sigh…where does the time go?

FINALLY finished my latest round of edits on Elixir Bound. Over the years I have gotten much better at revising, but I still wouldn’t say I like doing it. I love the thrill of a new idea, letting it marinate in my brain, the tendrils growing into a plot and characters. Furtive moments of writing snippets in my notebook because I just can’t help but get these thoughts on paper. The possibilities are wide open, no disappointment that the words fall short of the image in my mind.

Revision is a slow slog though the vomit of words that made it to the manuscript, have been pored over a million times, and still don’t quite meet expectations. If I have to transform another HAD, WAS, THAT into more interesting language, I might just (oh, JUST is another one of those words I’m trying to cut out!) throw my computer through the kitchen slider.

Wait, what am I talking about? I’ve been waiting years to work with an editor on my manuscript to whip it into publishable shape. In that case, I LOVE revising. Too bad I can’t stop thinking about that new story…the one I haven’t even officially started writing yet. I look forward to the day I am sick of that story!

The world stays the same…or does it?

February 26, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

After teasing us last September with the news that Einstein might have been wrong, scientists reported on Wednesday the face of physics as we know it is not changing. It appears a faulty cable connection created an erroneous reading of tiny neutrino particles traveling 60 nanoseconds faster than light.

I’m a bit disappointed to learn the way we thought the world worked isn’t changing (as in E really does equal MC² and Einstein had it right all along). Maybe the physicists over at CERN should have done a better job of keeping the lab rats from gnawing on sensitive technical equipment (just kidding)!

Yet just when I thought my imaginings of a new paradigm for the universe was going to be destroyed by such a mundane thing as a bum cable, a report on Friday restored a little of my previous excitement. It seems the faulty wiring could actually have made the original readings wrong in the opposite direction and the particles may have been traveling faster than the faster-than-the-speed-of-light readings.

Say what? So maybe Einstein was wrong and I might still have the pleasure of seeing a major scientific shift in my lifetime. Oh cruel physics…stop toying with my fragile emotions and get some definitive results already!

Magnificent Magnetic Poetry

February 18, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

The poetry has been building up on my fridge. And the poets have really outdone themselves with this round of magnetic verse. Here’s the latest musings:

squirrel breeze

        dream freeze
                 conscious can
                         gray man (nice rhyming scheme and use of spacing here…I have no idea what it all means, but I sometimes wonder if that’s not the hallmark of good poetry…me not understanding it!)

the devil relax ed with a cold drink after a long night of trick er y (I wonder what the devil’s drink of choice is…wouldn’t it be funny if it was an appletini?)
explore a prostitute s body with random electric fruit s (yikes!)
howl that beautiful morning torso noise (this person must have had beans the night before)
dream s create inspiration between cold shadow s and silent thought s (I wish my dreams did this…mostly they leave me feeling a bit puzzled)
live for more than a memory (very deep, very wise)
spark muse speak music green woman green woman (the use of repetition here indicates the author has a great understanding of literary techniques…or an unhealthy obsession with the Green Giant’s girlfriend!)
imagine a friend and she will come a live (kind of cool, but also kind of scary)
emotion s bleed the heart wrench the mind expose our soul and leave us naked (my favorite of the bunch, no explanation needed!)

The Hubby came up with the idea of hiding some of the overused words. “Prostitute,” “Pickle,” “Explore,” “Naked,” “Skeleton” come to mind (and pretty much anything else that can be manipulated into a dirty phrase). Although as we can see from the above lines, those words still offer thought-provoking options. “Prostitute” still should go…not much you can do with that word that isn’t dirty!

WIP Wednesday

February 8, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

I’ve got quite a few works-in-progress, so I’m instituting a new column about a WIP on the second Wednesday of each month.

Why Wednesday? Because it begins with the same letter as WIP, and you all know how us writers love our alliteration. Why the second one of the month? Because that’s when my critique group meets, so it’s easy to keep track of. Why once a month? Because it’s a good way to make sure I have at least one post a month (which lately is about all I’m managing to do!).

My soon-to-be published novel (oh, it’s so satisfying to write that) Elixir Bound is up first. A buddy of mine from my aforementioned critique group share a Wordle of his WIP, which inspired me to create one of my own. I used the entire manuscript of Elixir and Worlde spit back this image.

That big, orange word “Katora” that dominates a huge chunk of the Wordle is the main character’s name. I think that’s fitting, especially for a YA book, because so much of the preteen/teen experience is focused on the me and discovering who you are as a person.

Many of the other large words are also character names, which I guess means my story really is about the characters. Or I just need to stop using their names so darn much! Another interesting thing I noticed is that there are quite a few body parts listed (“Lips” and “mouth” anyone! You know there’s going to be kissing in the book!). Some of my other favorite words: “Elixir,” “family,” “power,” “breath,” “fire.”

I’d love to see what kind of Wordles you all come up with!