Second Monday of the months means a new #inkripples post!
I love the long, lazy days of summer. Wearing as little clothing as possible; going barefoot in the crunchy, dried out grass; running through every sprinkler you pass by. The summer just feels easy to me. The only thing that makes the end of summer okay is that it leads into my second favorite season: fall!
Apple picking (though sometimes this is an end-of-summer thing), limitless blue skies, jumping into piles of leaves, and that certain earthy smell that fall brings. Ahhh, fall is nice.
Then there’s that other thing that the end of summer brings: school! It’s been many years since I’ve been in school, but now that The Boy is in his second year of preschool (and the first year that he is starting in September…he was too young to start in September last year), I’m remembering about those beginning of school butterflies and that tiny bit of dread that the freedom of summer is over.
So lots of mixed feelings over here during this time of year. How are you all faring during the change of season from summer to fall?
Have you joined the #inkripples movement yet? Ripples in the Inkwell is a monthly meme created by Kai Strand, Mary Waibel, and Katie L. Carroll(me!). On the second Monday of each month, we post on a particular topic. The idea is that we toss a word, idea, or image into the inkwell and each post is a new ripple. There’s no wrong way to do it and we’d love for you to participate (full details here). September is all about school and fall. Be sure to provide a link to your own #inkripple in the comments!
A fun little project I’ve been working on all year long is my Tales from the Field series, high school soccer short stories on the Lightning Quick Reads blog. I’ve featured a few of them here, and I think I’ll continue to do so. They’ve brought up a lot of fun memories of when I played high school soccer and have been really fun to write.
This month’s is a sort of follow-up to August’s tale, which is called “Paloma’s Night Out” and is the first half of the infamous prank night known to the players as Dog Day Eve. You don’t have to read this one to enjoy September’s tale, but it might be fun to check it out first.
September’s tale is called “Mac’s Ultimate Prank” and really gets into the prank they women’s soccer team is pulling. Here’s a teaser:
Tales from the Field: Mac’s Ultimate Prank by Katie L. Carroll
Central High women’s soccer team: schooling the boys’ team on the field since 2012. Now it’s time to school them off the field.
I mute the music and kill the lights on my mom’s SUV, packed full of my teammates, as we approach our rival school, Valley High. The speedometer hovers below 20 mph. A block away from the school, I park behind a beat-up sedan, also packed full of soccer players.
Malcolm, the captain of the boys’ team (yes, I said boys, not men…because no high school guy is actually a man), leans against his car, his dreadlocks peeking out from under a black winter hat. We’re all dressed in black to blend in with the October night. Megan and I slip out of the SUV to talk strategy with him.
“Mac. Megan,” he whispers in greeting, his breath puffing in the cold air. We’re not close enough to the school to be heard by anyone there, but we’re not taking any chances of talking loudly and disturbing the neighborhood. “You ladies ready for this?”
“We were born ready,” I say before Megan can answer. She’s our captain and the boss on the soccer field, but I’m in charge tonight.
The thing is every year the Central High women’s soccer team has a better record than the boys’ team. And it goes without saying (though I’m going to say it) that we look a helluva lot better out on the field than they do.
But there is one thing the boys’ team is better at than us: they always pull the best Dog Day Eve prank. So this year (my senior—and final—year), I’m determined to one up them by stealing Benji the Bulldog, Valley’s mascot. And I’ve come up with a brilliant plan…
First off, my guest blog schedule is pretty wide open for the fall, so I’m definitely looking for guest posts to come my way. If you have a book coming out or an older one you’d like to promote, I’d love to have you on the blog. I prefer a post with some original thoughts (though it could be a post that’s been posted elsewhere) as opposed to something purely promotional.
You don’t have to be published or even a writer to guest post either. I’d love some short, fun posts about anything to do with writing, reading, the creative process, or whatever interesting ideas you might have. Hit me up on my contact page if you’re interested or mention it the comments with an easy way to contact you!
Okay, back to our regularly scheduled post…
So technically it’s still summer (and it certainly feels like summer this week here in CT), but school’s already back in session and the air and earth are starting to get that fall feel and smell to it. That means my non-summer schedule has started and with it comes more writing time. Yay!
Though I certainly have enjoyed all the fun times we’ve been having this summer and all out outside time, I’m definitely looking forward to sinking my teeth back into my writing projects.
In particular I’ve been chomping at the bit to get back to revising my YA thriller. Even with beta reader feedback coming in (and those ever-present doubts are rearing up, making me questions my abilities to pull off what I’m trying to accomplish with this story), I’ve never been so excited about the thought of sending a piece of writing out. So I’m hoping to ride this wave of confidence to the finish line and get to submitting it soon.
After that I don’t have any set plans on what I’ll be working on next. It’s a freeing and exciting feeling. I love the prospect of starting something new (or possibly digging back into something I put away for awhile but may come back to soon). The world is wide open at this point for me.
So how was everyone’s summer? What are your plans for the fall?
It’s a sad fact that I don’t give nearly enough love here on the blog for my picture app THE BEDTIME KNIGHT. It really is a fun, imaginative story (with some insight into what I was scared of as a child), and I love how illustrator Erika Baird brought it to life with pictures. The blurb reads:
When this mouse’s nightlight turns off, shadows turn into scary things in the dark. But when Daddy shines his flashlight on them, they disappear and turn into friendly things! Read along to find out if this tiny mouse can overcome her fear of the dark.
The thing that got me thinking about THE BEDTIME KNIGHT is that it now has a new home! It was originally published by MeeGenius, a children’t eBook subscription service, which was recently acquired by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (who earlier this year acquired Scholastic’s Educational Technology and Services business for $575 million).
THE BEDTIME KNIGHT will be and is still available through the MeeGenius platform. I’m excited about this new partnership and am hoping it will help my picture book app find new readers.
Have you joined the #inkripples movement yet? Ripples in the Inkwell is a monthly meme created by Kai Strand, Mary Waibel, and Katie L. Carroll (me!). On the second Monday of each month, we post on a particular topic. The idea is that we toss a word, idea, or image into the inkwell and each post is a new ripple. There’s no wrong way to do it and we’d love for you to participate (full details here). August’s topic is dog days and/or things that drag you down.
I’m going with the dog days part and I’m gonna see how many different ripples I can include in this post because this is honestly how my brain works. I think of one thing, then it leads to another, then it leads to another, until I come out the other end with something totally unrelated, like a game of telephone (do kids still play that or is that a very out-of-date reference?). So here goes:
Whenever I hear the term dog days, I immediately think of the song by Florence + The Machine called “Dog Days Are Over.”
But of course, dog days actually refer to the hot summer months (which are July and August in my part of the world). They are called the dog days because at one time they coincided with the rise of the star Sirius, the brightest star in the sky (it’s really a binary star, but it appears as one star, not two, to the naked eye). Sirius is part of the Canis Major constellation and is known at the dog star.
But when I think of Sirius, I think of Harry Potter’s godfather, Sirius Black (who doesn’t). I watched all the Harry Potter movies several times before I realized Gary Oldman is the actor who played Sirius in the movies.
In fact, it was only after watching The Dark Knight for like the hundredth time that I realized Sirius (Gary Oldman) is also Commissioner Gordon. The Dark Knight is one of those movies (along with The Shawshank Redemption and Clueless, among others) that I always watch when it’s on TV.
The Dark Knight is one of my husband’s favorite movies (and probably one of the last ones we saw in the movie theaters together because since having kids we hardly ever go to the movies, that and movies are crazy expensive these days). It’s a fitting favorite for him because he is affectionately called Batman by some of my family members.
This started back when my oldest nephew (who is now 16 years old) was a baby and couldn’t say my husband’s name very well. One day he said it and it sounded just like “Batman” and the nickname stuck.
Unfortunately I don’t have any cool superhero nicknames, but I was once dubbed “Buttercup” by some of my soccer teammates. They got this crazy idea to wear these hideous tuxedo shirts with ruffles as jerseys (it was a co-ed team and it was the guys who thought this would be fun). So they printed up numbers on these shirts and put silly names on the back. I was the only person who fit into the yellow “Buttercup” one, and then the team would sing The Foundations song “Build Me Up Buttercup.”
Totally random post, right? And so far removed from dog days at the end there. Did you notice, though, that I managed to bring it back full circle to a song? So some semblance of order amid the chaos.
Hopefully you’re not drowning in all ripples. And I’d love to see you add your own ripple this month. Make sure to link to it in the comments so I can check it out, and don’t forget about Mary’s and Kai’s posts.
