Category: Writing (Page 31 of 73)

Tales From the Field: Olivia’s Redemption

July 30, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

First off, I wanted to mention I have a very rare but special Sunday post coming up on August 2nd, so keep a look out for that. In the meantime, it seems you all enjoyed last month’s spotlight on Lightning Quick Reads, the short story blog I post for once a month, so I thought I’d spotlight this month’s story as well.

In June my story was “Tales From the Field: Olivia’s Camp Fail”. When I first conceived the idea for the Tales From the Field series, I had planned to have each story be told from a different girl’s point of view, but Olivia’s tale demanded more. Here’s an excerpt from July’s story “Tales From the Field: Olivia’s Redemption”.

Tales From the Field: Olivia’s Redemption by Katie L. Carroll

To free yourself from guilt you must forgive yourself.

The game is about to start. The strategizing, the pep talks, the warm-ups are done. My stomach is a pit of tingling nerves, the good kind, the ones that keep my reflexes sharp. I let out a long exhale, my breath smoking in the cool evening air. Our undefeated season is on the line tonight.

My ten teammates line up in front of me, their white home uniforms bright under the lights. I clap my goalie gloves together and stare down our gold-clad rivals, the Valley High women’s soccer team.

Time to get in the zone.

For some inexplicable reason, I glance into the stands, the side where the Valley fans sit. It takes me right out of the game. Marco. He’s here. I knew he would be, but seeing him is worse than I imagined. The tingling, game-ready nerves turn to anxious, stomach-twisting ones.

Marco, of course surrounded by his entourage of teammates from the Valley High boys’ team, stands down by the fence separating the field from the stands. He faces the crowd, his back to me, thank God. I don’t think I could handle seeing his chipped-tooth smile right now. He’s wearing the blues of the Italian National Team, not the Valley High black and gold. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe our kiss at camp this summer actually meant something to him.

Then I remember him cheering on his schoolmate as she sprinted to the ball, my hesitation, the ball bouncing off her foot and over the goal line. The shame of losing the camp championship for my team, all because of some stupid boy, creeps up my face in a blush…

You can check out the rest of the story at the Lightning Quick Reads blog! Enjoy!

Avon Library YA/Teen Author Night Wrap-Up

July 9, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

Had a inspiring evening at the Avon Free Public Library’s Local Author Festival Teen/YA Night where Steven Parlato, Cindy L. Rodriguez, Anissa Zucker, and I dished on the “Reader Experience.”

20150630_204006 - Copy Due to an unfortunate wrong turn, my mother-in-law (who graciously kept me company during the hour-long rive to Avon) and I barely made it in time for the event. Which was important because I was the first one to speak!

I discussed what I like to call the creative gap (something I’ve blogged about before here), in which I confessed that I’m a failure as a writer (I’m not really a failure…read the blog post to see what I mean). Basically, there is a gap that exists between a writer’s creative vision and what ends up on the page, a failure of the medium of the written word, but the reader is there is fill in that gap with their own imaginations. I ended my talk by reading a short excerpt from my YA fantasy ELIXIR BOUND.

Then Steven took over with a short excerpt from his YA novel THE NAMESAKE. He shared his thoughts on writing dark material for young readers and the importance of infusing humor into it. He shared “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of what readers have said about his book.

Cindy, who teaches reading to middle schoolers, very eloquently spoke about reluctant readers. She included a passage from her YA novel WHEN REASON BREAKS, in which students are reading and discussing one of Emily Dickinson’s poems. She introduced us to the “Reader’s Bill of Rights” created by Daniel Pennac, which I had never heard of but will definitely be thinking about as I read and write in the future.

Finally, Anissa rounded out the evening by asking 20150630_200344 attendees what their favorite books were growing up. She talked about how THE LITTLE PRINCE by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry what stories had a huge influence on her as a child and also when she started writing as an adult. She read from both her blog and her YA novel THE TRUE STORY OF SANTA CLAUS.

Then we had time to hang out, sign books, and talk with attendees. I caught up with a few new writer friends I connected with at the New England SCBWI Conference in April, and found out that one of them who attended my revision workshop has brought the techniques I taught back to her writing group (yay!). I also sold a few books (another yay!) and talked with a few new readers.

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The librarians at the Avon Library were so super organized that all us authors had to concentrate on was our presentations, and I think we nailed it. The librarians said they were going to tell the authors in the other groups that we held the audience captive and were the group to beat. Thanks so much to librarians Tina Panik and Cyndi Larsen and to my fellow authors for an amazing evening!

The Great Connecticut Caper Wrap-Up at Gillette Castle

June 15, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

The final chapter of THE GREAT CONNECTICUT CAPER, a serialized MG mystery, went live last week! Have you all been reading along? I read it aloud at the breakfast table as soon as I saw it was posted, and I thought it did a perfect job of pulling all the clues together and wrapping up the Caper. Later that day the whole family packed up and took a trip to Gillette Castle (which went missing and was a focal point of the Caper) to celebrate at the Mystery Solved event.

I decided not to participate in any kind of official capacity, so it was great fun just getting to be there and watching The Boy take part in a bunch of the activities. And there was a lot to do there, from painting and coloring to making (and eating) marshmallow castles. Plus there were some really fun read alouds…and ya know, the castle and the gorgeous scenery at Gillette Castle State Park. Plus I got to catch up with many of the Caper contributors and meet a few in person for the first time.

The Caper turned out to be a really fun project to be a part of. It was a nonpaying writing job, but it paid out in a lot of other ways, both financially with some workshop opportunities and in non-monetary ways with networking and some unique, fun opportunities with Caper events. It was cool to work with so many other creators on one story, definitely something I had never done before and would consider doing again.

I have really been cutting back on projects that aren’t my main focus (like my own WIP), particularly ones I do for free, but I’m really happy I took a chance on the Caper (and that they offered me a spot as an author!). I think you have to say no sometimes, but it’s good to try new things and stretch your creative boundaries. It was also great fodder for the blog (you can check out all the Caper related posts here).

Have any of you said yes to something that was an unknown and reaped the benefits? Or maybe you said yes and wished you hadn’t (I’ve had that happen as well)?

Spotlight on Lightning Quick Reads

June 11, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

I wanted to take today to highlight Lightning Quick Reads (#LQR), a flash fiction blog I contribute to, along with ten other authors. There is a theme every month and we each write a short story and post it on our designated day (mine is the 11th). There are also author spotlights, event announcements, a reader flash where readers can share their shorts, and the occasional giveaway. There are a ton of great stories coming out of the blog!

Most of my stories are a part of series I’m calling Tales From the Field about a women’s high school soccer team. Each piece is from a different players perspective, and I’m really pleased with how the stories are coming out. I was a pretty competitive soccer player growing up and find it really easy to think of material. And it’s not just about soccer because in high school all of life’s issues seems to get tangled up into one big messy ball. It’s about soccer, competition, pressure, love, and life.

With the World Cup (I refuse to use the qualifier “women’s”…of course I’m not talking about the men’s World Cup, that was last year!) going on, I thought it would be fun to give you a sneak peek of my June story (check out the full story on LQR).

Tale From the Field: Olivia’s Camp Fail by Katie L. Carroll

Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself.

The table sags under heaping containers of salad, pasta, and rolls at our pregame party the night before the big match against our cross-town rivals Valley High. But all it takes for me to lose my appetite is one comment from team captain Megan.

“We don’t want a repeat of camp finals.”

The low rumble of conversation and the smack of full mouths immediately ceases as nearly every player on the Central High women’s soccer team looks at me. I lock my gaze on the fat meatball atop a pile of spaghetti covered with tomato sauce, which I’m sure matches the color of my face right now.

“What happened at camp?” asks Brooke. An innocent enough question, if you don’t know what happened this summer—which she doesn’t because freshmen don’t attend camp—but a terribly taboo one if you do know what happened.

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.