Category: Writing (Page 17 of 72)

The Inspiration Behind CAT SIDHE by Jeff Chapman

May 30, 2018 / Katie L. Carroll

Jeff Chapman is stopping by the blog today to share the inspiration behind the first book in his latest fantasy series CAT SIDHE: Into the Witchlands I. I tend to be a bit picky about stories with animals POV characters, but I really loved this one (see my 5-star review on Goodreads). And learning of the real cat that inspired the character of Merliss made the story all the more meaningful. Welcome, Jeff!

A human spirit banished to the body of a cat.

Merliss has seen centuries of change, centuries of trouble.

Something nasty has come through one of the ley gates. It walks upright. It talks. And it looks like an oversized cat, but as Merliss can attest, it doesn’t smell like a cat.

t’s a cat sidhe on the hunt for slaves, anyone with opposable thumbs. Merliss travels to unknown territories to rescue a friend and encounters more trouble making her way home. The situation on the moors is far more dire than Merliss and her friends could have imagined.

Cat Sidhe is the first in a fantasy trilogy. Join Merliss on her prowls through dangerous lands.

Cat Sidhe is fantasy from a cat’s eye view. The protagonist may have been a girl once, but after centuries inside a cat’s mind and body, she’s almost as much cat as human. It’s a struggle for Merliss to hold on to her humanity.

The idea for Merliss, who first appeared in my short story “The Water Wight,” came from a real cat.

Smokey, three weeks after rescue.

In the fall of 2015, I pulled into my driveway to find a small gray cat sitting in front of the garage. I had seen this cat before but never had a good look at it. I had usually glimpsed it at night or twilight and a gray cat in the dark appears to be little more than a shadow. I had assumed it belonged to someone in the neighborhood. I was so wrong. It was starving. I could see every bone in its ribs. Pus was visible beneath one eye. The cat meowed at me. My wife came out the breezeway door at that moment. The cat trotted toward her and tried to enter our house.

We gave the cat some food and water. It ate like it had never seen food before. My daughters surrounded the cat so it wouldn’t run away, but I believe at this point the cat had decided it was going to live with us. We coaxed it into a carrier and took it to an emergency vet. The cat, which we named Smokey, was not sick with any life-threatening disease. She was dehydrated, malnourished (only 5.5 pounds), suffering from an upper respiratory infection and an eye infection, and had a million fleas.

Smokey shows off her two fangs.

Several hours and several hundred dollars later, we returned home with two antibiotics and a sick cat. We quarantined her in the breezeway. Out other cats spent a lot of time sniffing at the back door.

Smokey responded well to the medicines and our TLC. She gained weight and proved to be incredibly well-tempered. She wasn’t the cutest kitty on the block but certainly the sweetest. We soon discovered that she was deaf and missing an upper and lower canine. We had no idea of her age but Smokey appeared to have been up and down the alley a few times. When her quarantine period ended, Smokey moved into the house.

Smokey, looking cute.

We speculated a lot about Smokey’s past. What stories would she tell if she could talk? The speculation got me thinking about characters based on an old cat. Somehow, I made the leap of pairing a human spirit with a cat’s body. In the fantasy world I was developing, this pairing would grant the animal’s body unusually long life, but injuries would accumulate. Merliss was born.

Unfortunately, Smokey passed away in April. Her health had been declining for several months and then x-rays revealed painful bone tumors in her sternum. Taking her to the final vet appointment and staying with her until the end is one of the roughest tasks I’ve experienced. I still miss her every morning when she’s not waiting in the kitchen demanding breakfast.

Smokey’s memory lives on the character of Merliss. The cat silhouettes in the map and at the beginning of each chapter were made from pictures of Smokey.

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“The Water Wight” appears in Spirits in the Water: Elements of Untethered Realms Book 4. Store links to Cat Sidhe and Spirits in the Water can be found on my website at: http://www.jeffchapmanbooks.com/books/.

Weaving Historical Facts Into Middle Grade Fiction

May 15, 2018 / Katie L. Carroll

Coming on the heels of discussing the real history and legends that inspired my middle grade adventure PIRATE ISLAND (see my post “The Real Pirate Lore That Inspired PIRATE ISLAND”) and while I’m currently deep in research mode for my next middle grade novel, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to weave real history into novels. And how to do this for children’s books in particular.

Much of the history I’ve researched both on famed pirate Captain William Kidd (for PIRATE ISLAND) and on witch trials in Connecticut in the 17th century (for my current WIP) deals with dark topics and violence. Both involve execution by hanging, murder charges, and other not-so-pleasant topics. I’m a firm believer that children’s writers should not shy away from writing darker stories, and that these stories are important, so long as the material is handled in a thoughtful way (see Newbery winner Kate DiCamillo’s essay in TIME “Why Children’s Books Should Be a Little Sad”).

The key is to keep it age appropriate, which is hard to do when kids anywhere from say 7 or 8 all the way up to 13 or 14 might be reading your book. That’s where subtlety comes in. You can include heavier themes and images in a subtle way where more mature readers will get them and less mature readers will simply gloss over them. I like to think of animated movies for a good example of this. So many drop in jokes that are for the adults but that children just won’t (even if they’re funny to the kids on the surface, they won’t get the innuendo behind it).

Beyond making the material age appropriate, I think it’s important to make the history relevant. Whether that means making it fun (which isn’t necessarily the case of the history I’ve included) or by making it personal. Captain Kidd’s history is personal to Billy, the main character of PIRATE ISLAND, because Billy becomes obsessed with Kidd and models Kidd’s behavior to be brave. The history of the hidden treasure drives the plot of the story, but Billy’s emotional connection to Kidd drives the emotional story line.

I’ve only scratched the surface on this topic, but in the interest of keeping my blog posts short, I’ll leave you all on that thought for now. But there’s so much more material I have on weaving history into stories, I have to revisit this topic. Anything in particular you all would like me to discuss on the next post?

The Real Pirate Lore That Inspired PIRATE ISLAND

April 3, 2018 / Katie L. Carroll

As I think about what I’m going to talk about at the PIRATE ISLAND book launch party coming up in a couple of weeks, I realized I haven’t ever discussed here on the blog the inspiration behind the book.

It goes all way back to my childhood really. If you grew up in Milford, CT (like I did), you’d know of Charles Island and likely have even gone out to it. It’s a little island (14 acres small!) in Long Island Sound about a half mile off the coast of Milford. It’s pretty unassuming to look at, mostly covered by trees and some old ruins that you can’t see from the coastline. But it does add a distinctive feature to the view (the teaser image uses an actual picture I took of Charles Island).

Knowing only those few facts about the island, you’re probably wondering how it could possibly inspire anyone to write about it. But what if I told you that you can walk out to the island? “What?” you might say. “How could you possibly walk out to an island?” Twice a day at low tide, the waters of Long Island Sound recede enough to reveal a tombolo, locally referred to as a sandbar, that goes all the way from the Silver Sands Beach in Milford to Charles Island. Okay, so things are getting a little more interesting…but still, not necessarily interesting enough to be inspiration worthy.

But what if I told you that this little, unassuming island has a very conspicuous history? It was originally called Poquehaug and was used as a summer resident for Sachem Ansantawae of the local Paugussett tribe. The island and Milford (before it was called that) were purchased by English settlers from the Paugussett Tribe in the 1639 for six coats, ten blankets, one kettle, twelve hatchets, twelve hoes, two dozen knifes, and a dozen mirrors. (For a comprehensive history of Charles Island, check out An Historical Account of Charles Island: Milford, Connecticut by Michael C. Dooling.)

Over the years, Charles Island has been a tobacco farm, a summer resort, a fish fertilizer plant, and a religious retreat site. The tobacco farm failed, the abandoned hotel ended up burning, and people have lost their lives trying to get to and from the island. All interesting, but still not the whole story.

This is where history gets fuzzy and turns to legend. Sachem Ansantawae’s daughter may have been kidnapped, causing him to curse the island. Infamous pirate Captain William Kidd (Billy, the main character of PIRATE ISLAND, tells the pirate’s history in my #CaptainKiddHistory blog series) may have buried his lost treasure there, and also maybe cursed the island. Sixteenth-century Mexican emperor Guatmozin’s Aztec treasure may have found its way to the island, a treasure that was cursed and thereby cursing the island. So there’s a chance that this tiny island in Long Island Sound has actually been cursed three times (or “thrice-cursed” as Eleanor Birch from PIRATE ISLAND would tell you).

So now do you think Charles Island is worthy of a story? Well, I certainly did. And it was the history and legends of Captain Kidd (and, at the risk of being a teeny bit spoilery, maybe one of the the others), that caught my imagination. As you can probably tell, I’ve done a lot of research about the island. I never thought Charles Island was an apt name for it, so I decided to name the island of Billy’s obsession Pirate Island.

I’ve included a lot of these historical tidbits both about the island and Kidd in the actual PIRATE ISLAND story, but I also made up some things. It was fun to play around with the legends and mix them with my own imaginings.

The PIRATE ISLAND book launch party will be held at the Milford, CT Public Library on April 17 from 2-4 pm. You can learn more about how the local lore inspired the story, play a fun fishing game and win a prize, grab a pirate cookie or a signed book, and take a picture at the photo booth!

A thrice cursed island, a legendary pirate treasure, and one not-so-brave boy. What could possibly go wrong?

For centuries, the whereabouts of Captain William Kidd’s lost pirate treasure has remained a mystery. When Billy’s best friend, Andy, proposes they look for it on nearby Pirate Island, Billy thinks it’s just another one of their crazy adventures. It’s usually Billy who ends up in trouble as a result, but he goes along for the ride…like always. The more he delves into the life and death of Kidd, the more he thinks the treasure is real and that it might be buried on the small island in Long Island Sound. Billy–nope, call him William–becomes obsessed with the captain of the same first name. He even believes he’s possessed by Kidd’s restless soul. Now he and the spirit of a long-dead pirate are leading the crazy adventure on Pirate Island. And what they find is far bigger than the treasure they imagined.

Find PIRATE ISLAND at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, and other book retailers.

Coming To The Realization That This Isn’t My Story To Write

March 19, 2018 / Katie L. Carroll

In light of some really thoughtful, hard conversations going on in the children’s literature world about representation, I was thinking about a manuscript I’d started but never finished.

I loved the characters. The world I had begun to create had lots of story elements that I both love reading about and writing about. It is a YA retelling at its heart but has unique elements that I thought would make it stand out. I completed over 50,000 word on it for National Novel Writing Month (quite a few years ago). My critique group liked the bits they saw of it. I adore the story, and the plot had really started to come together in my mind. I did quite a bit of research for it. But I never finished it.

I thought it was because I couldn’t find the right character to tell the story. I played around with having a different point-of-view character. I played around with multiple points of view. I rewrote the beginning and tried it in third person instead of first. Yet I could never quite figure out how to tell the story. So I put it away. I had intentions of maybe coming back to it someday when I was a better writer who could maybe find the right voice.

But now, I don’t think I’m going to come back to it. I think I now know why I was having so much trouble trying to figure out how to tell that story. It’s not because I don’t think I could write it and write it well. And it’s not because I don’t think it would make for a good story. In fact, I think it would make a really great story, one I’d love to read some day. But I’m not going to write it.

One of the things that we as storytellers need to be asking ourselves, beyond if we can write a story and write it well, is should we be writing a story. I couldn’t find the right way to tell this particular story–as much as I love the idea of it–because it’s not my story to tell. It deals with cultures and characters who would probably not be best served with me doing the telling. I can (and have) visit the place where my story takes place and research the culture, but I’m not part of it, so the story would suffer for it. It could end up being harmful in its representation.

Maybe I’ll come back to the basic idea of doing a retelling of the tale that inspired the original idea, but with a totally different spin to it, one that I am more equipped to tell. And I have plenty of other ideas floating around in my head and notebooks that I certainly am not lacking for new stories to write.

Of course, it hurts a little to put this manuscript to rest. I’ve put a lot of work into it, and I want to be able to tell it. I won’t, though. And I’m okay with that.

Young Kids, Short Attention Span, Short Writing Time

February 20, 2018 / Katie L. Carroll

Babies and young children have short attention spans, but the title of this post doesn’t refer to my kids’ attention spans; it refers to mine. I once read a quote about a mother’s attention span is only as long as that of her youngest child (I tried looking it up to cite it but couldn’t find it and, honestly, didn’t look that long 😉 ). My youngest is 7 months old, so that tells you about how long I can concentrate on any one thing. The shiny hot mess that is social media doesn’t help either!

via GIPHY

Hence why I’ve been focusing a lot of my writing time on picture books. Not easier to write than novels, but easier to feel like I’m actually making some progress on it in the shorter work sessions that fit into my current life. I’ve also been reading a ton of picture books with the kids, so I’m naturally inspired by that form.

Yet that old perpetual WIP (work-in-progress) Elixir Saved is weighing on me. I’m at the point where not working on it is always in the back of my mind. It’s different than when I’ve consciously taken a break from it because I needed to. This time I kind of feel like I’m just avoiding it. I’m in the meaty middle of the draft. I know where the story needs to go and I have a solid idea of how to get it there, but it’s gonna take a lot of work. So, yeah, I should probably make it a priority to work on it, instead of finding new things to work on.

Not that I’m going to stop working on my picture books. I just think I need a better balance. Isn’t is that what it always comes down to in pretty much everything in life: finding the right balance.

One last thing. I’m also in the market for a picture book critique partner. I’ve got plenty of writing buddies to exchange novels with, but not so much when it comes to picture books. I’d like someone with a little bit of experience in the area, but you you certainly don’t have to be an expert. Send me a message if you’re interested in seeing if we’re a good match!