Tag: reading (Page 1 of 2)

Training My Brain to Read Audiobooks

February 11, 2019 / Katie L. Carroll

You all know I’m a big reader and a big fan of all types of reading. Hardcovers, paperbacks, ebooks; literary or commercial; adult, YA, middle grade, picture book; graphic novel, verse, non-fiction–I love them all! But there is one format that I haven’t personally been able to get into: audiobooks, which is kind of disappointing because they have recently had a surge in popularity (see the article in Publishers Weekly “Audiobooks Revenue Jumped 22.7% in 2018” by John Maher) and are more readily available than ever.

That time The Bedtime Knight audiobook was a #1 new release!
Picture books are a great way to break into audiobooks.

My lack of audiobook readings isn’t because I don’t think it’s “real” reading (who gets to decide what “real” reading is anyway?) or because it’s not a good way to experience a book (I think some books are actually better in audio form); it’s because of the way my brain works.

I’m a visual learner, always reading along (if that’s an option) while listening to someone speak or read directions. I often watch movies with the closed captions on when I’m at home. My brain absorbs information better when I can see it, so listening to audiobooks is hard for me. I’ll get 15 minutes in and all of a sudden I’ll be like, “Wait! What’s going on?” because my brain spaced out and I haven’t been listening for the last 10 minutes.

I also find listening to be an important tool both as a parent and a writer. I need to be able to hear what the kiddos are up to even when I can’t see them, so going around the house listening to an audiobook isn’t a great option. And I like to be able to hear what’s going on in the world as I observe it in order to inform my senses as a writer.

But I do feel like I’m missing out. So in order to work my way up to a full audiobook, I’ve started listening to podcasts. They’re much shorter than books and they come in all sorts of different topics. So far I feel like I’ve done pretty well with them. I can mostly stay focused and actually pay attention to what’s being said, and they fit really nicely into my daily routine. I like to listen when I’m doing laundry or grocery shopping. I’ve found having them play aloud works when I don’t have to worry about disturbing anyone else and having just one earbud in when I’m in a situation where it would bother others to hear what I’m listening to.

It’s also definitely an avenue I’ve been thinking about getting my own books in. Middle grade in particular is a space where audiobooks are very popular, so I’d love to have PIRATE ISLAND available that way. But then there’s the issue of time and not having enough of it to navigate a new project.

What’s your opinion on audiobooks and podcasts? Any great reads you’ve listened to lately?

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.

——————–

“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/.

August #InkRipples: The Problem with Guilty Pleasures

August 9, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

The problem I have with the term “guilty pleasure” is that I don’t think you should feel guilty for enjoying the things you like to do. Whatever you read, watch, or do in your free time is your business (so long as it’s legal and, ya know, not hurting anyone). Enjoy it. Embrace it. Forget those people who don’t approve of it!

I’ve watched plenty of movies and TV and read plenty of books that others might consider guilty pleasures, but I certainly haven’t felt guilty about it. I’m more likely to feel guilty about not doing something. (Like when I read a book while the boys are having quiet time instead of doing, say, the laundry.)

Okay, I might feel slightly guilty when I hide in the kitchen enjoying the last chocolate muffin while the boys are busy playing in the other room. A mom’s gotta have a treat once in awhile, and kids can be real mooches. At least I haven’t resorted to eating in the bathroom to be alone.

Time to fess up! What is something you enjoy that might be considered a guilty pleasure?

#InkRipples is a monthly meme created by Katie L. Carroll, Mary Waibel, and Kai Strand. We pick a topic (August is all about guilty pleasures), drop a ripple in the inkwell (i.e. write about it on our blogs), and see where the conversation goes. Be sure to check out Kai’s and Mary’s posts this month. 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.

Confessions of an Author: Creative Gap

January 26, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

I’ve had some wonderful event and workshop opportunities come up for this year (more details to come on those!). With preparations for those in full swing, plus a couple of sick kiddos, a crazy blizzard on the way, and my regular writing and editing duties (Does anyone else snicker when they see the word “duty”? …No, just my infantile mind.), I’m dipping into the archives for today’s post. Stay safe all of you who are in the path of the storm!

Confession #7: The creative gap that exists between what an author imagines in her head and what ends up on the paper inevitably leads to a certain level of failure.

As a writer, I have certain images, ideas, nuances, themes, characters (and any number of other things) in my head when I create a piece of writing. It’s not that I necessarily have a set agenda–this is especially true when drafting and the story and characters are still taking shape–it’s more that I have a clear vision for a piece. I wouldn’t call it a message (because who wants to read a message-heavy piece of writing)…for a lack of a better way to describe it, let’s call it a creative vision.

Inevitably, the words I use to try and achieve my creative vision never quite live up to what I see in my imagination. This has nothing to with my ability as a writer; it’s more a failure of the medium of the written word. Writers have to rely on words to paint a physical and emotional landscape for a reader. We create not only worlds and characters, but ideas and feelings that need to come alive through words because a reader can’t see into a writer’s head.

Even now, trying to explain this creative gap is a frustratingly futile attempt. The words you read here are not exactly what is going on in my head. There is a creative gap between my brain and what you’re reading.

English users even try to steal words from other languages to help overcome the creative gap. A word like “umami”, taken from the Japanese, is roughly a pleasant savory taste (tomatoes are said to possess this quality), but really it’s a taste or sensation that can’t really be expressed in our language.

Then there are words that are so complex and subject to a person’s individual experiences and emotions. Success. Peace. Love. A writer can use these words, but has no control over how a reader will interpret it. Words are simply an inadequate form of communication sometimes.

And this creative gap isn’t unique to writers; it crosses all types of creative media. Films, though more visual, lack in different areas than books. When watching a film, a viewer can’t be in a character’s head and hear his/her direct thoughts (except for the occasional voice over). Artists can paint or draw what they see in their head, but there is no commentary to go with it. A person looking at a painting has to draw his/her own emotional context out of it.

So what’s a writer or creative person to do? Give up because our creative vision will never be fulfilled. Create a failure and despair over it. Nope! We accept that the creative gap exists and use all the tools we possess to convey our creative vision to the best of our ability.

Because something magical happens when our (inadequate) words are read. The creative gap works in reverse. Readers brings their own creative visions to the writer’s words. And they fill the gap, not as the writer would have filled it, but with their own imaginations.

In the end, the creative gap does not create a failure, but a piece of work that is unique to each individual who consumes it. A work that is full of images, ideas, nuances, themes, characters (and any number of things) the creator never could have imagined. And that is certainly a wonderful exchange.

Reading with Beverly Stowe McClure Author of STAR OF THE TEAM

November 14, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

Beverly Stowe McClure is an author, a former teacher, and a wonderful, supportive member of the kidlit writing community. Today she is sharing her MG contemporary STAR OF THE TEAM with a post about how she wasn’t always a reader. Welcome, Beverly!

JOHN NEWBERY AND A CLASSROOM OF FIFTH GRADERS

by Beverly Stowe McClure

When I was very young, I was not a reader. I listened to the radio instead. A program called “Let’s Pretend” came on every Saturday morning. This was BTV (Before TV). I loved Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White and the Severn Dwarfs and all the others. Even though I never read the books, perhaps I absorbed the stories that years later I would remember how much I enjoyed them.

I squeaked through high school, reading only what I had to. After graduation I worked at various jobs, none of them exciting. When my sons started school, I decided to attend the local university so I could find a job with a future. This meant reading, lots of it. Four years later, I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Education degree. And, now get this, I became a teacher. What was I thinking? Teaching meant more reading. I also made an amazing discovery. Not only did I love teaching, I loved reading children’s books.

One of the requirements we had for our fifth-graders was a book report every six weeks. This was before the AR program many schools have today. Our students had to read Newbery winner or honor books. Memories surfaced of how much I hated book reports in my school days, so I hoped to make them more pleasant for my boys and girls. I also had to read the books so I could tell they’d read them. Sigh. I wish someone had introduced me to these stories when I was in school. Maybe they did and I wasn’t listening. For whatever reasons, I was hooked. My students’ reports were amazing. Sometimes, they dressed like the characters and acted out the stories. Other times they wrote reports with illustrations or in story form. Most of them had fun. The teacher had fun. Reading was fun. Remember the saying: “You’re never too old to learn.” It’s true.

So today, I thank John Newbery, the wonderful books that have won his award, and my classroom of fifth-graders for showing their teacher the beauty of a good book.

STAR OF THE TEAM blurb:

A girl.

A dream.

An accident.

A dream shattered.

Eleven-year-old Kate Taylor dreams of being the star of her basketball team, Angels. When Kate’s tooth is knocked out at one of the games and her mother, who is also her coach, says she can’t play until the tooth the dentist replants heals, Kate’s dreams are in jeopardy. Add Emily, the new girl at school who claims she’s the best, and Kate faces a challenge to prove that she is the star.

Will Kate succeed? Or will Emily ruin Kate’s plans?

Find it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

About the Author:

Most of the time, you’ll find Beverly in front of her computer, writing the stories little voices whisper in her ear. When she’s not writing, she takes long walks and snaps pictures of clouds, wild flowers, birds and deer. To some of her friends, she is affectionately known as the “Bug Lady” because she rescues butterflies, moths, walking sticks, and praying mantis from her cats.

For twenty-two years Beverly taught children in grades two through five how to read and write. They taught her patience. Now, she teaches a women’s Sunday school class at her church. To relax she plays the piano. Her cats don’t appreciate good music and run and hide when she tickles the ivories.

For more about Beverly visit her blog or website.