Author: Katie L. Carroll (Page 22 of 144)
Joshua David Bellin is stopping by today to celebrate the release of the third book in his Ecosystem trilogy HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE. Let’s give Joshua a big welcome as he shares a bit of info about each of the books!
About the Ecosystem series:
In a far distant future, Earth’s environment has mutated into the Ecosystem, a collective sentience that has pushed human beings to the brink of extinction. Only those individuals who are born with the psychic power known as the Sense can negotiate the Ecosystem’s deadly maze in search of the food, water, and fuel their people need to survive. When Sarah, a seventeen-year-old Sensor with a grudge against the Ecosystem, sets out to avenge her mother’s death, she learns more about the Ecosystem–and about herself–than she ever bargained for.
Book One: ECOSYSTEM
Miriam, an apprentice Sensor, is lost in the Ecosystem, and Sarah sets out to rescue her. Joining Sarah is Isaac, a boy who claims to possess knowledge of the Ecosystem that will help their people survive. The harrowing journey to find the missing apprentice takes Sarah and Isaac into the Ecosystem’s deadliest places. And it takes Sarah into the unexplored territory of her own heart, where she discovers feelings that threaten to tear her–and her society–apart.
Book Two: THE DEVOURING LAND
When Sarah’s village is overrun by monstrous creatures from the Ecosystem, she shepherds the survivors into the forest surrounding the village. Her own Sense badly damaged in an earlier attack, she must fight through a host of new threats in hopes of discovering the place where her mother was born, rumored to be home to a community of healers. But the City of the Queens is haunted by a dark secret of its own, and Sarah will have to learn the truth of her lineage in order to save the people she loves and protect the world she knows.
Book Three: HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE
The City of the Queens is under attack. Sarah is forced to flee into the treacherous mountains to the far north, where she hopes to gain allies to contest the power that assails the city. But to wage this final battle, Sarah will have to overcome an ancient curse that threatens not only the survival of her people but the existence of the Ecosystem itself. And she will have to decide whether to save Isaac, the boy she loves, at the cost of losing everything else she holds dear.
Check out the Ecosytem trilogy on Amazon and learn more about Joshua on his website.
It’s been all ELIXIR SAVED and author events on the blog lately and today’s no exception. I’ve been compiling the mess of a draft that is ELIXIR SAVED and it’s been slightly terrifying. It’s been 8ish-year process to write this thing, it’s got three point-of-view characters, and it turns out that the manuscript is currently over 117,000 words!!! Yikes!
It’s been a journey to say the least. I haven’t quite written THE END yet, which I was hoping to do before I started the first round of revisions. But I realized I needed to read through what I already have in order to write the ending, which is weird because I’ve known the major events of the end pretty much since I started writing the story. Some things you can’t force, I guess. As I’ve been organizing the draft, the pieces of the end are already starting to come together in my mind.
I’ve also been busy scheduling and planning events for the spring and summer. This Saturday, I’ll be at the Author Expo and Book Fair at the public library in Torrington, CT from 12-4 p.m. That means I’ll be missing the New England SCBWI conference this year. 🙁 Hopefully I’ll get there next year.
Then in June I’ll be part of Pirate Day in downtown Milford, CT. It looks like I’ll be doing two presentations about the local pirate lore, one in morning before the pirates arrive by boat and one in the afternoon on the town green. There are a ton of fun activities throughout the day for the whole family. I’ll have PIRATE ISLAND for sale, games to play, and picture opportunities when I’m not speaking. It’s going to be a really fun (and busy!) day.
I’m also part of the CT Authors Trail this summer. I’ll be at the Voluntown Public Library in August for that. You can check out my Events page for all the updated details on where to find me. And I’m always happy to have people reach out to me for events and school or library visit; check out my Author Visits page for details on that.
As for the boys, we had a fun spring break a couple of weeks ago. We’ve started making our plans for the summer. I’ll have to do a picture post soon, so you can see what we’ve been up to. What have you all been up to lately?
I wrote something new recently and very different from anything I’ve written before. It came to me in a rush of excitement and creativity in a way I’ve never experienced before.
I’ve had ideas come crashing in, images or characters or some spark that leads to a story. But this was different. In the past, the ideas have been pieces of something bigger that needed a lot more thought to turn into a full idea.
This time, it was like I was possessed by the muse. It was literally keeping me awake at night. The idea, and moreover the emotion of the story, was a wave that kept churning inside me and wouldn’t let me focus on anything else until I let it out. And it came to me in such a fully formed way.
Not to say that it was easy to write. It required a good amount of research, but the research was just as exciting as the writing. Writing it felt like putting two parts of myself together that I hadn’t found a way to fit in the same context, even though the story is nothing about me in any way. It melded two of my passions that I’ve been trying to figure out how to intersect but had never been able to do so before.
I know this all sounds kind of vague, and I’m purposely avoiding specifics here on the blog for certain reasons that I’m being quiet about right now.
But I wanted to share the enthusiasm I’m feeling right now. Much of the writing and submitting process can be a slog. You face plot points you don’t know how to solve, characters that aren’t fleshed out enough, a voice that doesn’t stand out enough. Then there are the rejections…don’t even get me started.
This, right now, how I’m feeling. It makes all those things worth it. So I just wanted to let you all know that. Thanks for listening!
It’s been a quiet year for author events so far (which is okay with me, given the lousy weather in New England in the winter and the busy fall I had). I’ve also been a bit quiet here on the blog this year because I’ve been busy writing, writing, writing. But I’m excited to announce two events for this year with hopefully more to come.
The first one is only a couple of weeks away! I’ll be attending the Local Authors Fest at the Public Library of New London on Saturday, March 23 from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. There will be a whopping 50 authors in attendance! Grabbed a signed book, enter the raffle, take a photo with an author, and listen to a select group of authors speak about their books and writing journeys. There will be children’s books and adult books in all types of genres, so something for everyone. I’ll have copies of my YA fantasy ELIXIR BOUNDand my middle grade adventure PIRATE ISLAND, and some book swag too.
I’m please to also announce that I’ve been selected as one of the authors in this year’s Connecticut Authors Trail. I’ll be at the Voluntown Public Library on Monday, August 5 at 6:00 p.m. to talk about my writing journey and PIRATE ISLAND. I’ll have more details about this event soon and CT Authors Trail finale event at Mohegan Sun in September.
If any educators and librarians are interested in booking me for a writing workshop or talk, I have spots open for this year as well. Check out my author visitspage for more details or email me at KatieLCarroll @ yahoo.com (minus the spaces).