Category: Writing (Page 31 of 73)

Find a Clue, Leave a Clue: Wrapping Up THE GREAT CT CAPER with Stacy DeKeyser

June 7, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

It’s with great excitement and a little sadness that I announce the final chapter of THE GREAT CT CAPER is here! What an amazing adventure it has been both helping to write the Caper and reading along. While the family and I are enjoying the Mystery Solved event at Gillette Castle today, you can catch up with Stacy DeKeyser, author of chapter 12 of the Caper. Welcome, Stacy!

Find a Clue, Leave a Clue: Wrapping Up The Great CT Caper

by Stacy DeKeyser

Lucky me, assigned the last chapter of The Great Connecticut Caper! I’d never done anything like this before—tying up all the loose ends that 11 other authors had unraveled. But I told myself it would be a fun challenge. And it was!

I started by reading the first 10 chapters of the story. (I’ll talk about Chapter 11 later.) As I read and re-read the story (6 or 7 times?), I hunted for clues that the other authors had hidden in their chapters. These would be the seeds I’d use I to write the final chapter. I added my own notes to the very detailed story chart compiled by the Caper’s editor, Theresa Sullivan Barger.

Next, I listed the things that HAD to happen by the end of the story. Our heroes, Li-Ming and Thomas, had to defeat the dreaded Lady Hallow, for one thing. And of course, Gillette Castle had to be found. But how? I jotted down a few possibilities.

One goal of the Caper is to get kids excited about visiting Connecticut’s historical and cultural landmarks. The story had already incorporated a few of them, and I wanted to keep that theme going. So I decided that the final chapter would include one more Connecticut landmark. But which one?

Once more, I studied the clues that were already hidden in the Caper. And those clues led me to the perfect setting for the end of the story. One more very special (and very secret) Connecticut landmark.

Things were coming together! I was almost ready to start writing.

One cool feature of the Caper is that each author could write his or her chapter only after reading the chapters that had come before. But Sarah Albee (the author of Chapter 11) and I were given a bit of leeway. Since Chapter 11 is actually “The Ending, Part One,” Sarah and I needed to work together to plan the final series of events. As it turned out, we both had similar ideas for the climax of the story. And so Sarah only needed to tweak a couple of details in her chapter so they would point to the resolution (and the secret Connecticut landmark) I had in mind.

Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 4.30.35 PM Now I was ready to visit the secret landmark myself, to hammer out the details of the final chapter. Armed with notebook and cell phone camera, I soaked in the atmosphere and asked lots of questions. I took photos. By the time I was done, I knew that this setting would work perfectly.

Back at my desk, I studied all the photos I had taken at Gillette Castle. More ideas came, and Chapter 12 took shape.

Now you can read the entire story. You can find out how the mystery of Gillette Castle is solved, and discover the identity of the secret landmark! I hope you’ll agree that it’s the perfect place to end The Great Connecticut Caper. And I hope now you’ll be itching to visit that place, and Gillette Castle, to look for the clues that Li-Ming and Thomas left behind. Because the clues are there. All you have to do is find them.

About the Author:

Stacy DeKeyser is the author of five books for children, including ONE WITCH AT A TIME and THE BRIXEN WITCH (S&S/McElderry). Her books have been included in the Chicago Public Library’s Best of the Best, the Bank Street College of Education Best Books of the Year, Amazon Editors’ Picks, KIRKUS REVIEW’s New and Notable Books for Children, and various state award lists. She lives in Simsbury. Visit her website at stacydekeyser.com.

Gearing Up for a Noncommittal Summer

May 29, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

This time last year I was preparing for the arrival of The Prince with plans to spend the summer enjoying my two boys and adjusting to life as a mom of two. Now looking forward to this summer, I have that strange feeling of not believing how quickly time has gone but also feeling like it’s been a long year.

In a couple of weeks, we’ll be kicking off summer a little early with The Prince’s first birthday party at my parents’ house. My birthday (a special milestone one if I were a hobbit) falls in the middle of summer, but no big parties scheduled for me. Fast forward to the end of August and we’ll be unofficially ending the summer with The Boy’s fourth birthday party, probably also at my parents’ house.

So what do I plan on sandwiching in between those two big events (besides celebrating/crying over getting another year older)? Hopefully lots of summer fun: beach days, playing in the yard with the boys, grounding myself every day, day trips with the family…that kind of stuff.

The first half of the year has been full of author events (all told I’ve probably done more author events in the last six months than in all my previous years combined) and I’ve got three more planned for June (check out my homepage for details), so I’d like to slow down a bit for the summer. Iced tea in the afternoon, wine in the evening, feet in the sand, and read a book for pleasure kind of slowing down.

I’m so very close to completing a good draft of my WIP, so I’ll be devoting some time to revising once I get my beta feedback and a little break from said WIP post-drafting. Maybe I’ll start drafting a new book…or maybe not. I think I’ll see where the winds take me on that one. I may need a break in order to refill the creative well.

I’d also like to pay attention to one aspect of my life I’ve been woefully neglectful of: namely, getting in shape. I’ve been slowly acclimating my mind to the idea of maybe getting back into running, and I might try working with a personal trainer and seeing if I like it. Not sure about going back to playing soccer. I’ll see how I feel after I’m in better shape.

Overall, I’m in the mood to be very noncommittal about things. Before long those boys of mine will be off running all over the place without me, so I’m trying to be more in the moment and enjoy them while they’re little (even through the hard times of them being little).

I’m thinking of running old posts here for most of the summer, and probably not too many guest posts. Keep things simple…yeah, that sounds real nice. What are your plans for the summer?

Meet Sarah Albee Author of Chapter 11 of The Great Connecticut Caper

May 25, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

Chapter 11 of The Great Connecticut Caper is here! That means only one more to go! It’s been a wild ride. In honor of the mystery (almost) being solved, the Connecticut Humanities is hosting an event at Gillette Castle on Sunday, June 7 from 2-4 pm. It’ll be a great opportunity to meet some of the authors and illustrators and to participate in some fun events (I heard there will be bookish type prizes!). In the meantime, today you can get know Sarah Albee, author of chapter 11, a little better. Welcome, Sarah!

What was your approach to writing chapter 11 of The Great CT Caper? Given that it was the second-to-last chapter, how much did you feel you had to wrap up in order to set up the ending for the author of the final chapter?

I actually worked pretty closely with Stacy DeKeyser, my fellow Caper author who was slated to write the final episode. Together we hatched a plan to wrap up the various plot threads and resolve the story in our two remaining installments. There was quite a bit of back-and-forth and she had some great ideas that I incorporated into my chapter. I think the combination of brain power was a great way to work!

What were your expectations coming into writing a collaborative, serialized story for young readers? Had you written anything like this before?

I have written books that include lots of chapter cliffhangers and that have very controlled word counts, but never in collaboration with other writers. It was fun, but challenging, because my predecessors have wonderfully wild imaginations and took the story onto some wild tangents. I was in the role of “batting cleanup,” and I enjoyed the challenge.

What kind of research did you do for the project?

I visited the Castle and took a whole lot of pictures, so I felt I had a good grounding with the setting.

The Great CT Caper’s target audience is children in grades four through seven. What were some of your favorite books when you were that age?

I loved books with magic in them, like the Narnia chronicles and Edward Eager’s books (Half Magic, Magic by the Lake, etc.). I also loved detective stories, and devoured Sherlock Holmes stories and Agatha Christie mysteries.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? What one piece of advice that you didn’t get but wished you had gotten?

I love Stephen King’s admonition in his book On Writing, where he says, “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” In other words, write with simplicity and clarity.

The advice I wish I’d gotten? Ignore people who say “Write what you know.” I love finding stuff out. I love not knowing about something and learning about it. It’s the best part of being a nonfiction writer!

If you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring two books and one movie, what would you bring?

I’d bring the collected works of P.G. Wodehouse, the collected works of Shakespeare (is that cheating??), and a Pixar movie. Every one of them is ingenious, but I guess I’d say Monsters Inc. No, Toy Story. No, The Incredibles. Ok. Monsters Inc.

Where else can readers find your writings? What’s up next for your writing career?

My latest book, which came out in February with National Geographic, is called Why’d They Wear That? Fashion as the Mirror of History. My next book, slated for 2017, is about poison in human history.

And finally, what is something funny/weird/exceptional about yourself that you don’t normally share with others in an interview?

After college, I lived for a year in Cairo, Egypt, where I played on a semi-professional women’s basketball team!

About the Author:

Sarah Albee is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 100 books for kids, ranging from preschool through middle grade. Her latest nonfiction middle grade title Why’d They Wear That? is about crazy fashions in history (National Geographic, 2015). She enjoys writing about topics where history and science connect, including Bugged: How Insects Changed History (2014) and Poop Happened: A History of the World from the Bottom Up (2010). When she isn’t writing books or visiting schools in person or via Skype, Sarah blogs about offbeat history at http://sarahalbeebooks.com.

Poop Happened coverBugged

I Will Finish this Draft…

May 19, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

…this week. I can do it! C’mon, chant it for me, “You can do it, you can do it, you can do it.”

That is all!

Twisting Fairy Tales with Author Mary Waibel

May 15, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

Back when I was doing research for my NESCBWI15 workshop about mining fairy tales, myths, and legends to write fantasy, I scoured the Interwebs for interviews with fantasy authors and also directly contacted a few. Mary Waibel, master of twisting fairy tales, was one of the gracious authors who provided me with an insight into her writing process. Though I couldn’t include all her wonderful info in the presentation itself (it was only an hour long!), it was too good to not share. So Mary let me put it on the blog. Thanks, Mary!

How Fairy Tales Inspire Me

by Mary Waibel

I love fairy tales. I always have, but I’m not sure why I fell in love with them. Maybe it was the Disney influence of growing up with Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. But regardless, give me a fairy tale and I’m happy girl. I guess it makes sense that my love of fairy tales creeps into my own writing. In fact, several of my books are twists on some well known tales.

Quest of the Hart, my first published novel, and the first book in the Princess of Valendria series, is a reverse Sleeping Beauty. This story all started when a friend suggested I write a book where the girly-girl saves the guy. While thinking about how to adapt this idea, I kept thinking of the princess in the tower needing rescue, and Sleeping Beauty popped into my mind. I pulled out my DVD, sat down with pen and paper, and jotted down the sequence of how things happened in the Disney version. Armed with a plan, I started working on my own version, and Quest of the Hart was born.

The second book in the Princess of Valendria series, Charmed Memories, started out as a twist on Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. I never intended to borrow from another fairy tale in it, and it wasn’t until someone messaged me and said, {SPOILER ALERT} “This is a twist on The Little Mermaid, isn’t it?” that I realized what I’d done.

The third book in the series, Different Kind of Knight, isn’t a retelling of anything, just a continuation for one of the characters in book two.

When a call for short stories themed around a pocket watch type device came out, I sat down and penned a reverse Cinderella, where the princess used a magical sundial/watch looking device to find the unknown prince she’d danced with at the ball. When I learned the anthology hadn’t gotten enough submissions, I pulled the story and extended it into The Mystery Prince, a novella that I self-published.

While I don’t have a set way for plotting and writing my stories, I do have a way of thinking about how to twist fairy tales into my works.

First, I think it’s important to incorporate as many elements of the original story as you can, but give your own spin to them. For example, In Sleeping Beauty, Aurora is pricked by the spindle and the spell is cast. In Quest of the Hart, Devlin is cut by a magic dagger and the spell is cast. Prince Phillip finds a sword, slays the dragon, and kisses the princess awake. Princess Kaylee has to go on a quest to find a sword, get a drop of dragon’s blood, and make an elixir to wake her prince. In this manner, Quest of the Hart, truly follows the storyline of Sleeping Beauty, but it isn’t a retelling. It’s a twist on the themes.

Second, make a twist. I tend to reverse roles. Have the princess go on the quest, do the dangerous stuff the guy usually does. But you could also make other twists. Set it in the present. Maybe Sleeping Beauty is a girl in a coma and her prince is the doctor trying to wake her up. Set it in space. Maybe Rapunzel is trapped on a faraway planet because her spaceship ran out of gas (thanks to an alien life form who wants to trap her there for her company) and she’s just waiting for another spaceship to land and rescue her. Find a twist that interests you and run with it.

Of course, a fairy tale isn’t complete without a Happy-Ever-After (and this is probably why I love them so much.) No matter what improbable odds are stacked against them at the beginning (a dirty child sitting in the corner who fancies herself in love with the prince-or, as in my version, a bodyguard impersonating a prince), or what obstacles are thrown in their paths (running away when the clock strikes midnight-sending someone else in your place to see who is chosen to be her husband) the characters will be together at the end.

And that’s how I borrow from fairy tales, twist them, and make a new story.

QUEST OF THE HART blurb:

A reverse Sleeping Beauty tale where the princess goes on the quest to save the prince.

Princess Kaylee has never had to fight for anything. Her entire life has been arranged, even her marriage. But when Prince Devlin falls under an enchantment, she finds she is willing to do anything to save him, even if it means fighting a dragon.

Devlin’s own sister, Princess Arabella, is behind the deadly plot. She wants the throne and will use any means necessary to gain it. Her perfect plan unravels, leaving Devlin caught in a magical sleep that is slowly spreading through the kingdom of Breniera. All Arabella needs to finish her spell and claim the crown is a drop of Kaylee’s blood, but obtaining the single drop is proving more difficult than expected.

To save her betrothed, Kaylee embarks on a quest to find an ancient sword and gather a drop of dragon’s blood, while trying to stay out of Arabella’s traps. But Arabella’s traps aren’t the only danger. Time is everything. For once the last inhabitant of the kingdom falls asleep, the spell will be sealed, and not even true love’s kiss will break it.

Quest of the Hart can be purchased at MuseItUp Publishing, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, iBooks, and Smashwords.

Book Excerpt:

Abella’s fingers trembled on the hilt of the dagger as desire for the animal swept through her. He was perfect, not a point out of place or a blemish on his coat. She gazed longingly at him, until a sound from Kaylee brought her back to the task at hand.

Shaking her head to clear it, she watched Kaylee speak to the creature. Did she honestly expect him to answer? Arabella stopped her snort before it gave away her presence. There would be no better chance than this.

Holding the dagger before her, she lined up Kaylee with the tip of the blade. It had to be a perfect throw, as she would not get another chance. She dipped the blade forward once, twice, thrice, then let it fly through the air with a flick of her wrist. The blade spun, end over end, sailing forward. Arabella held her breath, watching, praying her aim was true.

The dagger flew on target, but just before it buried itself in Kaylee’s back, the princess moved, and the dagger embedded itself into the chest of the hart.

About the Author:

Twisting Tales One Story At A Time

YA Author Mary Waibel is a romantic at heart. Her love of fairy tales, fantasy, and happy-ever-after fill the pages of her stories.

When not twisting her own tales, she can be found with her nose buried in any book she can get her hands on. Some of her favorite authors are Nora Roberts, Shannon Hale, Lisa Shearin, and Kristin Cashore.

Mary lives in upstate New York with her wonderful husband, hockey player son, and two cats. Many a Friday or Saturday night she spends hours gaming with family and friends. In the fall and winter she can be found at the ice rink, cheering on her son and his team, and in the summer, she enjoys escaping with her family on camping trips all over the states.

Interacting with her readers is one of Mary’s favorite parts of being an author. You can find her at these sites: author website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and author blog.