Category: Writing (Page 24 of 73)

4 Simple Ways to Help an Author

November 30, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

The holiday season is in full swing, and it’s a time for gift giving and charity. With the giving spirit in mind, perhaps you’re wondering how you can help out your favorite authors. Well, I have four simple suggestions on how to do just that this holiday season or anytime of the year!

Buy the Book

Okay, this one may seem like a no-brainer, but the absolute best way to help out an author is to buy their book. So maybe it’s not your favorite genre or aimed at your age category (or maybe you don’t read books…please tell me you read books!), buy it anyway. Notice this suggestion doesn’t say “read the book.” You can buy it without reading it (of course us authors want people to read our books, but we totally get it that a book is not for everyone…we’ll love you just for buying it, even if your never break it open). Give it to someone as a gift. Put it in your living room and when people come over, you can point to it and say, “Look! My friend wrote this book.” Ebooks are generally the least inexpensive option, so buy a digital copy and let it gather virtual dust. The more an author’s book is bought, the more likely they will make more books, and, ya know, the more likely they’ll be able to buy food and gas and stuff.

Pick Up a Free Copy

I’m not talking about going to Joe Schmo’s book pirating website and downloading a free, illegal copy of the book (and probably a virus or two on your computer). That doesn’t help us at all! Authors, especially those who have a series or several stand-alone books, will sometimes run specials where the first in a series or a book from their backlist is free. But we run these free promos on legit websites, like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other reputable book sellers. How does this help an author? So we don’t get money from this type of transaction, but we do get exposure. Enough free downloads means our book moves up on lists and maybe earns us a spot in one of those website’s newsletters. Also, if people like the free book, they may decide to pay for the other books we’ve written that aren’t being offered for free.

Write a Review

So you’ve bought your author friend’s book or you (legally) downloaded it for free. Now what? Remember how we said we really want you to read it (but understand if you don’t), that’s because we also love it if you take the time to write a review. It doesn’t have to be anything long (just long enough to hit a site’s minimum character count) or super interesting really. Something like, “I really enjoyed this fantasy adventure. Fans of Lord of the Rings would really like it too.” And it doesn’t have to be a 5-star rating. Authors (well, many of us!) want honest reviews. Don’t get personal about the author (even if you’re that author’s mom and want to tell them you love them); keep it about the book, its setting, its plot, its characters, and how all of it made you feel. The most important websites for reviews are Amazon and Goodreads. Amazon because if you get enough reviews to satisfy one of their algorithms, you will often get free marketing from them in the form of being a featured book or perhaps placed in their newsletters. Goodreads is where a lot of readers hang out and find their next book to read. If you do have a blog or somewhere on the Internet where you share your opinions of things, go ahead and put the review there too.

Give it a Shout Out

There are over 1 million new books published each year in the U.S. alone…that’s a lot of competition! In today’s publishing world, marketing–meaning getting the word out about your book–largely falls into the hands of authors, even those who are published with a big house. We are a creative, wonderful bunch, but marketers by trade we are not. That’s not to say there aren’t authors out there doing a fabulous job of marketing their books, but many of us don’t have the skill set or time to give the book the real push it needs to sell lots of copies. And no matter how much marketing time and money is put into a book, word of mouth is still one of the most important (if not the most important) ways a book is sold. Mention your author friend’s book to others. Ask your author friend for bookmarks or something you can share with your friends, families, co-workers, that guy in the grocery store who bags your groceries. Go to your library and request they purchase a copy. Same with your local bookstore. Ask if they have it in stock. If not, ask them to order it. We authors even have a name for the people who help us spread the word about our books: street team. Be a part of your favorite author’s street team, even if they don’t officially have one!

Being an author is awesome, but it’s not a great way to make a living. One report out of London found that only 1 in 10 authors make a living through their writing, and a crazy 17% made no money at all in one full year! The reality for many of us is that we have full-time jobs not related to writing; we are stay-at-home parents who are the primary caregivers to our kids; we write full-time but most of our income does not come from our novels. Any help we can get spreading the word about our books, we’ll take! And I can tell you that if you’re the one doing that, we will love you for all eternity.

NaNoWriMo and ELIXIR SAVED Sneak Peek

November 21, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

NaNoWriMo is in full swing! As I’ve mentioned, the book I’ve been working on is ELIXIR SAVED, a companion novel to my published YA fantasy ELIXIR BOUND. I thought as little treat, I’d share the working blurb (i.e. jacket copy) for the second Elixir book.

The Elixir has a way of entwining the lives of those it saves. Kylene was spared from a painful death by a poisoned spear, Zelenka from a vicious animal attack, and Devon from an incurable childhood illness. Although saved by the Elixir, none were left without scars. After a shocking message from the Higher Beings, each one will embark on a journey. Kylene is sent to the frozen depths of Blanchardwood, Zelenka back to the wilds of Faway Forest, and Devon on a spiritual journey of self-discovery. Three paths that lead to war against an ancient foe where even the Elixir cannot save everyone. They will be pushed to the limits of what they think they can do. It all comes down to how much they are willing to sacrifice with their second chances.

Three lives saved by the Elixir; three lives bound by it. In ELIXIR SAVED, escape back into the world of the Kase family in this much-anticipated follow up to ELIXIR BOUND.

Alrighty, back to the grind for me. Gotta get those 25,000 word finished!

November #InkRipples: Shaped but not Defined by our Heritage

November 7, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

Our heritage is where we come from, what we’ve inherited from our ancestors and family. It can come in the form of physical traits, property or monetary assets, titles, traditions, and many other forms. Heritage often has a big role in determining who we are when we are born and how we grow up.

A person is born a prince, another in poverty. A person is born to be classically beautiful, another with an inherited physical deformity. A person inherits a great wealth, another a debt left behind by a loved one who passes away. These are the hands we are dealt, but they don’t have to be the sole thing that defines us.

One of the most interesting things about human nature is that there is no one things that makes us who we are (kind of like those masks we talked about in last month’s #InkRipples). Sure, there are some things about our selves that we can’t change, but we don’t have to let that one thing be the only thing about us. I’m short…I’ve inherited that trait, but that never kept me from playing basketball, and I ended up being quite good at it.

To put my writer mask on for a moment, that’s one of the most fun things about writing characters. No character is one thing. “Good” characters have faults and “bad” characters have redeeming qualities…at least they should in order to be well-rounded. I love a hero who has deep-seeded flaws, and an antihero can be so interesting to read. And villains who have nice sides to them or who have somewhat justifiable reasons for their actions are so much better than purely evil characters.

How has your heritage shaped who you are and what aspects of yourself have nothing to do with your heritage?

#InkRipples is a monthly meme created by Katie L. Carroll, Mary Waibel, and Kai Strand. We pick a topic (November is all about heritage), drop a ripple in the inkwell (i.e. write about it on our blogs), and see where the conversation goes. We’d love to have you join in the conversation on your own blogs or on your social media page. Full details and each month’s topic can be found on my #InkRipples page.

Meet Me at the Annual Authors’ Festival at the Groton Public Library

November 4, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

Taking an afternoon off from the craziness of my NaNoWriMo goals to meet up with fellow authors and readers at the Groton Public Library’s Annual Authors’ Festival. If you’re local, stop on by and grab a signed book by one of the over 40 authors who will be there. Get a head start on your holiday shopping with gift wrapping available, enjoy the refreshments, and try your luck at one of the raffle prizes. It all starts at noon tomorrow (Saturday, November 5)!

Gearing up for National Novel Writing Month 2016

October 31, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo or NaNo). The idea is that crazy writers set aside the month of November in an attempt to draft 50,000 words of a novel. That’s approximately 1,667 words a day, including weekends and holidays.

Before I had kids I actually did NaNoWriMo one year, the whole 50,000 words. And it sucked. The process of writing that many words in one month sucked. The words themselves sucked. The story sucked. And it sucked the life out of me! It’s a manuscript where I really liked the initial idea, but when I revised it, nothing was working. I tried different point of views, shifting tenses, reworking the plot. Let’s just say I’ve moved on from this story and it kind of soured me on the whole NaNoWriMo thing.

Elixir Bound by [Carroll, Katie L.] But I’ve been in a bit of a writing funk the last few months, since summer really. I’ve done lots of “smaller” writing things (writing a new beginning for a finished manuscript, working on a picture book idea, and the usual parenting articles and such). I had a few spurts of productivity, but not a lot of new words flowing. And I really have been wanting to get a draft done of ELIXIR SAVED (a companion to ELIXIR BOUND). Like I’ve been working on a first draft of this manuscript for years and it’s really starting to weigh on me.

Now it’s a tough manuscript to write because one of the point-of-view characters is based on my sister Kylene (and even has her name) and can be emotionally draining. So I’ve been lenient on myself when I’ve had to take breaks, but it’s time to get this one done. I decided to come up with a plan to finish. Earlier this month I took a look at how much I’d actually written, and it was a lot more than I thought I had–over 50,000 words. To put that into perspective, the completed novel of ELIXIR BOUND is a little over 55,000 words.

Now I knew that SAVED, with its multiple points of views and more epic scale, was going to be quite a bit longer than BOUND, but it was a nice surprise to see that I had accumulated so many words. It was heartening, and it made me feel like I could actually finish this first draft…and soon. That’s was when I was like, “I could use NaNo to get this done.”

With so many words already, I don’t need to set the (unrealistic for me) goal of 50,000 words in a month. I’m going to halve it for a goal of 25,000 words, which would be about 834 words a day or 1,137 words a day if you only count weekdays. That seems doable to me, and it should be enough to finish off the draft. And you know what, even if I don’t meet my exact goal, it’s going to serve as a framework to get me to the finish.

I’ve spent the last few weeks outlining the plot I already have and listing out the scenes I still need to write. I’ve written, formatted, and scheduled all my November blog posts (with only a few updates needed when the dates get closer), so I don’t have to worry about those. I dusted off my old NaNo profile (for anyone else who is doing NaNo, my username is ktlc1113 if you want to look me up on their site) and got it all up to date. I’ve squared away all my other freelancing, etc… work. (The kiddos will still be around all month bugging me, but not much I can do about them!)

I’m ready to start…tomorrow. And hopefully by the end of the month, I’ll have a finished draft of ELIXIR SAVED. Wish me luck!