Category: Elixir Bound (Page 15 of 19)

First School Visit

June 21, 2013 / Katie L. Carroll

Don’t forget, voting opens today for the You Gotta Read blog cover contest. Elixir Bound is entry #10. I’d love to have your vote if you get a minute to check it out!

In other news, I had my first school visit last week. I did a presentation on creating characters. It was for a group of 8th graders (including my oldest nephew, who is also one of my writing buddies), less than a week before graduation. Uh oh! Seriously, though, they were great. They were attentive and I even got some student participation…when they had to. When I mentioned Katniss, one girl said fairly loudly, “Katnip!” And when I talked about Edward Cullen, there were some sighs of delight and a few shouts for team Jacob!

We had a bit of technological snafu when I couldn’t get my PowerPoint presentation to come up on their computer (still not sure why it wouldn’t recognize my files). So instead of having all the bullet points and pictures up on the big white board, they were just up on my laptop screen. Luckily the group and the classroom were on the small side, so they were able to see all the silly pics I created. Including when I put the teacher’s head on a certain famous villain! (The teacher is my friend’s mom, so she was cool with it.)

I was sweating a bit when with the computer stuff, but I had a backup so it worked out okay (for future visits, I think I’ll be prepared with even more ways to access my presentations). Still wish I had been able to give them the full effect, but they got the meat and potatoes…just not the full bells and whistles. The teacher asked some good questions in the Q&A part about revision techniques for the students and also on generating ideas for creative writing. I think I might come up with workshops for students about those topics.

For those of you who do school visits, how do you access your visuals during school visits?

Shameless Plug: Vote for the Cover of Elixir Bound

June 10, 2013 / Katie L. Carroll

A lot of you have expressed your love for the cover of Elixir Bound, created by the talented C.K. Volnek. I, too, love this cover and really appreciate the level of detail on it…and I really can’t wait to see it on the cover of the paperback (update: looks like a late summer release date)!

So I wanted to let you all know that the Elixir Bound cover is one of You Gotta Read’s entries for the June cover contest. The entry should be posting today (entry #10), and voting starts June 21 and goes until June 26. If it places in the top 3, I’ll get some free advertising on their website.

On a less pluggy note, great weather here in CT this weekend. We took a walk to the beach on Saturday and on Sunday went strawberry picking and did the wine tasting at the farm’s winery. Love those fresh strawberries, but it was early in the season so the pickings were a bit slim. May have to go back in a couple of weeks when all those green berries are red. How was your weekend?

New England SCBWI 2013 Conference Gems

May 10, 2013 / Katie L. Carroll

The 2013 New England SCBWI conference was amazing (of course it was…these conference are always amazing)! Caught up with old friends, including the very talented Kimberly Sabatini and Jodi Moore, and met some new ones. Left feeling inspired and exhausted, and I’m still brimming with creative juices.

One of the highlights for me was seeing my book covers up on the screen in the ballroom during the downtime/announcements/mealtime in the ballroom!

I’ve collected a few conference gems that resonated with me. A quick note about why I use italics instead of quotation marks…these are not necessarily direct quotes, some may be close to what the speaker actually said and others are my own rewording/interpretation as I scrambled to take notes during the speeches and presentations. So without further ado, here they are:

We should meet the world with all our senses. (Jeannine Atkins)
What’s outside in the setting can reflect what’s going on in the inside of a character, but it can also be in contrast to what’s being felt. (Jeannine Atkins)
How do we access that which we are trying to recreate when we’re sitting at our desks or computers? Sometimes we need a sensory kick in the pants. (Dawn Metcalf)
We work with art and it can evoke an objective response. (Ruben Pfeffer)
It was as if someone else’s words had opened up a whole host of words in me. (Sharon Creech)
As writers we want company; we need company. You come along too, please. (Sharon Creech)
Revision is finding and strengthening the heart of a story, and revision is messier than people want it to be. (Kate Messner)
Maybe I had to stop trying to prove to people I was good enough and just had to do the work I was passionate about. (Grace Lin)
Every story has a message, whether or not the writer was aware of it or intended it. (Chris Eboch)
I come to one little detail that sort of wakes up my mind and then start amassing details like constellations. (Jeannine Atkins)
Writers are somewhat schizophrenic; we hear voices in our heads; we listen instead of conversing. (Padma Venkatraman)
Go down the rabbit hole. (Greg Fishbone)

Personally, I feel like I stretched myself not only as a writer but as a person. I jumped headlong into any writing activities that came up in the workshops I attended, even braving to share some of my raw work in front of others. I dared to act out an emotion for others to write about (and I have terrible stage fright when it comes to acting anything). I drove to the train station by myself in a city I’d never been to and picked up another author. So all in all, a fantastic weekend!

Confessions of an Author: Ideas

April 26, 2013 / Katie L. Carroll

Business first: I’m over at author extraordinaire Kai Strand’s blog today with a character interview of Katora, the main character from Elixir Bound.

Confession #5: I have more ideas than I’ll ever be able to write.

Seriously, though, I’m not even sure where most of my ideas come from. I’ve mentioned this before, but often ideas (or solutions to plot problems) just pop into my head while I’m in the shower. Or maybe I’ll see some random person at the mall or the playground or wherever and *poof* I’ll have a new character with a backstory and goals and conflicts.

While watching the Oscars this year (and admittedly feeling tired in general and very bored with the whole awards/skit thing), my next Great Big Idea appeared. The idea took my obsession with physics (you know how I love black holes and the Large Hadron Collider) and gave it a character. There isn’t quite a fleshed out plot yet, but the character is very clear to me now. Before this moment (literally a very brief moment…no idea one minute, a great idea the next) I only had an intellectual interest in something, and now I have a real, solid character.

Not all my ideas are great either. Some pop into my head and fade away. Some I might think about for awhile and eventually jot down or even work on fleshing out a bit, but they don’t really come together. One of the reasons I don’t like to write my ideas on paper when they first come to me is because I have so many ideas. I know the ones that stay with me, the ones I can’t stop thinking about, are the ones that are good fodder for a story.

I’m not really sure exactly what parts need to come together to make this magic happen. I’ve always been a creative thinker, so part of it may just be my mind is always working in the background, synthesizing input and my thoughts while I’m doing other things. Part of it, too, is because I’m open to new ideas because it’s those Shiny New Ideas are what keep me excited about writing.

Writing a first draft of a novel is tough, revising a novel is tough, editing a novel is tough…the ideas are the fun part…they’re the things that give me the rush of adrenaline, that make me push through a tough middle when drafting, a tough scene when revising, or line edits (which are just plain boring).

So I’m afraid I can’t share what makes me a creative person or where my ideas come from…because I really have no idea. But there are people who know about creativity, who study it. The good news is recent research indicates you can train your brain to be more creative. I’m not sure I’ll be partaking in any of those exercises, though. I just don’t think my brain can handle any more Big Ideas right now!

Make Me Laugh and Giveaway Winner

March 19, 2013 / Katie L. Carroll

First things first, I have a winner for the giveaway in honor of announcing that Elixir Bound is out in paperback. And the winner is…*drum roll*…Megan! She got to choose either a signed copy of Elixir Bound + Swag or a 3 chapter critique. Thanks to everyone who entered.

I’ll probably be running another giveaway when Elixir Bound releases in paperback later this year. And don’t forget that it’s already available as an ebook from the MuseItUp bookstore, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other ebook retailers.

In other news, last night I attended a humor-writing video chat with Robin Mellom, author of the humorous YA Ditched and the MG The Classroom series. She shared her secrets of writing funny.

We talked potty humor, slapstick, reading and watching funny shows and films for inspiration, age appropriate humor, and the importance of adding heartfelt moments into humor writing. One interesting thing Robin mentioned was how she likes to immerse herself in all things funny while working on a humorous story.

That got me thinking about the funny moments in my life. And just this morning, The Boy provided me with a little humor. I was eating a grapefruit and he indicated he wanted to try some, so I gave him a piece. He played with it for a minute and then shoved it in his mouth. His face puckered up in the classic lemon-face pose, but then he asked for more! Despite continuing to make the face, he gobbled up piece after piece.

This reminded me of when my nephew (who is now six, but at the time was maybe two) ate a lemon at a diner. He sucked on it and his face puckered up. All the adults at the table laughed hysterically. So you know what he did? He started sucking on the lemon again!

Humor is everywhere! What made you laugh recently?