Tag: writing inspiration (Page 2 of 2)

Interview with Katlyn Duncan Author of TAKE BACK YOUR BOOK

August 30, 2021 / Katie L. Carroll

I’m very excited to host my amazing critique partner Katlyn Duncan today to talk about her latest release TAKE BACK Y OUR BOOK: AN AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO RIGHTS REVERSION AND PUBLISHING ON YOUR TERMS. Katlyn is the author of many YA and adult works of fiction and this is her first work of non-fiction. It’s so full of relevant information about the business of publishing and rights reversion, and I think any author or aspiring author will feel empowered after reading it. Welcome, Katlyn!

The inspiration behind a book is frequently talked about when writing fiction, but there’s often an interesting inspiration story behind non-fiction. What gave you the idea for TAKE BACK YOUR BOOK: AN AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO RIGHTS REVERSION AND PUBLISHING ON YOUR TERMS?

When the book rights for my debut Young Adult paranormal series (The Life After series) reverted to me in 2019, I immediately looked online to see what I should do with the book. But there weren’t many recent articles about what to do after book rights reversion. I had to do a lot of research myself, which was mostly scouring writer groups and working my network to find other writers who had their book rights reverted. For those authors, all of their stories were different, which helped me understand that I had to make a lot of decisions on my own.

One day, you and I were discussing self-publishing, and the idea came so quickly to me. There weren’t any resources out there about the process of rights reversion all the way through re-publishing the book, so I wrote it myself hoping to help any authors who are or will be in the same position.

Let’s turn the inspiration to you! What made you want to become a writer?

Storytelling has always been a huge part of my life. As a kid, I loved drama class and acting in plays while devouring movies as much as I could. Eventually, that stemmed into penning my own plays and movie scripts (which will never see the light of day, by the way!). Then when I was in my early twenties, I started to write fiction novels and I haven’t stopped since.

What’s one book you wish you had written? And (of course) why?

Can I say ‘Twilight’? I wouldn’t mind living in Stephenie Meyer’s shoes right now with the ability to auto sell anything I write and take all those lofty advances to the bank.

I think we’d all say yes to Stephenie Meyer’s advances! You write both fiction and non-fiction. How was writing TAKE BACK YOUR BOOK different from writing your fiction projects?

There are a few ways it was different. First, I had to do a lot of research for this book, more than I have for any of my fiction novels. Previously, I had saved some articles from when I was going through the book rights reversion process, but there was so much more to outline for the reader. I had to make sure that I listed as many options for a reverted book as possible, which meant exploring as many publishing paths as I could, along with outlining the self-publishing process from start to finish, and beyond to marketing and future plans for the book.

Second, writing a non-fiction “arc” is much different than a fiction one. You have to structure the book in a way that is compelling and makes sense as its own type of story while allowing author voice to shine through instead of a character’s voice.

Obviously TAKE BACK YOUR BOOK is full of advice for authors, but what’s one important takeaway you’d like to leave readers with today?

Regarding book rights, make sure you understand what you are signing away and how long your rights will be in someone else’s hands. This is where community is very important. Ask fellow authors in both the “traditional” and self-publishing spheres and find where your book belongs before you put pen to paper and sign any contract.

It’s so important to understand what is in a publishing contract before you sign. One last thing, what is next for you in your writing career?

I’ve completely veered away from traditional publishing and diving head-first into self-publishing. I’m re-publishing my debut YA series under a new pen name (Katy Duncan), starting with ‘Soul Taken’ in September 2021, followed soon after by book 2 (‘Soul Possessed’) and book 3 (‘Soul Betrayed’) in 2022, in addition to publishing adult thrillers after that.

TAKE BACK YOUR BOOK blurb:

Revive your book from the bottom of the charts with rights reversion.

Have you sold your book to a publisher, but years later it’s not selling the way you want? Are you frustrated with their lack of marketing and little to no royalty payments?

It’s time to take back your book rights.

This guide will give you the knowledge and confidence to get your book rights reverted and how to place it in front of new readers, on your terms.

In this book you’ll find:

The basics of rights reversion
What to do with your book after reversion
How to re-publish your book
Long-term considerations for your author business and backlist
Stories from authors successfully reverting and republishing their books

You will always be your book’s biggest champion. Don’t condemn it to years of neglect at someone else’s hands. Take back your rights and make them work for you for years to come.

Buy the book on Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and these other book retailers.

About the Author:

Katlyn Duncan is a multi-published hybrid author of adult and young adult fiction and has ghostwritten over forty novels for children and adults.

When she’s not writing, she’s obsessing over many (many) television series’, and hanging out on YouTube where she shares her writing process and all the bookish things.

Find her at katlynduncan.com, YouTube, and Instagram.

Defining My Author Theme Courtesy of #LA18SCBWI and Libba Bray

August 14, 2018 / Katie L. Carroll

I purposefully didn’t title this piece with the words “author brand” because there are important distinctions between a brand and what I’m talking about here (and calling my “author theme”), and also because I don’t want to anger Libba Bray! But let me back up for a second and give you the all-important context.

I recently attended the SCBWI conference in L.A. where there were some amazing keynotes (and there were a whole lot of keynotes at this conference). The brilliant YA novelist Libba Bray gave her keynote on Saturday afternoon. As a conference attendee, I was buzzing with inspiration from the previous day and a half but not overloaded and exhausted like I was pretty much all of Sunday.

Libba discussed something that is on the mind of any writer who is tuned into the business and marketing side of publishing: author branding! I’ve been trying to come up with a snappy definition of an author brand, but it’s kind of making me woozy thinking about it, so I Googled it instead. Here are the links to the first couple of articles that pop up “How To Build Your Author Brand From Scratch (And Why You Need To)” and “7 Best Ways To Build An Authentic Author Brand.”

The bottom line is that most authors feel the pressure to have a brand, but it feels icky to figure out what that is and how to create one that is effective in selling ourselves. And selling yourself is all so counterintuitive to the creative process and to being authentic to an artistic goal rather than a monetary one. Blech!

Libba articulated this phenomenon so well when she framed it as a question vs. an answer. She said that writing is about wanting to know something. This question is what makes your story come alive. The question leads us from somewhere we know to something new. The question leads to change. On the other hand, branding is advertising, and it’s all about answers. Brands are static by nature, and it puts us in a position to view kids as consumers instead of as growing, learning young humans. (No direct quotes because I tend to not worry about getting direct quotes while taking notes during conferences. Check out the SCBWI Conference Blog for a great overview of not only Libba’s keynote but the whole conference.)

Libba ended with the thought that if anyone asks about your brand, say that it’s a commitment to craft and a deep respect for my audience. This thought–and the whole keynote really–sparked an idea of what I’m all about as an author of books for young people. I’m not calling it a brand because yuck, hence the term I use in the title of this post “author theme.” Where a brand would be about selling myself or my books, my author theme is about what I think I bring to the table as a creator, writer, teacher, and human being.

I know authors who essentially say all their writings–no matter what form, genre, or intended audience–come back to some central theme or idea. I’ve always struggled to come up with any one thing that ties all my work together, never mind one thing that ties together who I am with my work. The spark that came to me during this keynote pulled together my writing, my talks about writing and the creative process, and my philosophy on life in a way that I had never been able to do.

Now that I’ve thought of it, it seems painfully obvious that this is what I’ve been writing about and thinking about. It ties in the ubiquitousness of my sister’s death with my career. It’s the thing I’ve been inscribing in ELIXIR BOUND when I sign copies for readers. (Are you screaming at the screen yet for me to just tell you already?!) Alright, alright…here it is in all it’s simple glory:

Find Your Magic.

That’s it. It’s as simple as that. My sister’s death helped me see the thing I was supposed to be doing in this world, the magic of writing for kids and teens. It’s the thing I try to bring to kids when I talk to them at book events and school visits. I know they won’t all grow up aspiring to be writers (though I always emphasize the importance of having the skills of being an effective reader and writer), but I want them all to pursue, in some way, the thing that feels like magic to them. It’s the thing my characters are always trying to find as well, their magic. And it’s kind of been there all along, staring me in the face. I was finally able to see it and grasp on to it.

Find Your Magic.

As simple as it seems, it’s not always simple to do it, to live it. You have to first figure out what your magic is, which is no easy feat. It took me 20+ years of life and a major life event to figure it out myself. Then once you do know what your magic is, you have to figure out how to pursue it while also, ya know, feeding, clothing, housing yourself and any independents.

But when you can figure out a way to actually do it (even if it’s not the way you make your living), when you actually find your magic and live your magic. Wow, that’s some pretty amazing stuff.

Heading Out To #LA18SCBWI: Conference Gems Round-Up

July 31, 2018 / Katie L. Carroll

I head out for the 2018 SCBWI conference in L.A. in two days! I’ve been super nervous about leaving The Gentleman for four nights (it’s the youngest I’m ever leaving any of the babies for a conference), so I haven’t really had any nervousness left in me for anything else. But as it’s crept closer, I find I’m getting those little butterflies of excitement/nerves about the actual conference.

I was taking a look back all the gems of wisdom and inspiration I have accumulated on the Observation Desk from previous conferences and thought it would be fun to link to those here. (Wow! Look at that, they go all the way back ten years ago! And look at how many conferences I’ve been to.) Here they are:

SCBWI L.A. 2008 Conference Gems: Part 1

SCBWI L.A. 2008 Conference Gems: Part 2

SCBWI L.A. 2008 Conference Gems: Part 3

SCBWI Eastern PA 2010 Conference Wrap Up

Nuggets of Writing Wisdom from SCBWI L.A. 2010 Conference

SCBWI Poconos Conference 2011

SCBWI Poconos Retreat 2012

New England SCBWI 2013 Conference Gems

Thoughts on the New England SCBWI 2015 Conference

New England SCBWI 2015 Conference Gems of Wisdom

New England SCBWI 2016 Conference Words of Wisdom for Writing and Life

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/.

Thoughts on the New England SCBWI 2015 Conference

April 29, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

First of all a big thank you to all the wonderful coordinators, volunteers, faculty, and attendees who made #NESCBWI15 (the New England SCBWI 2015 conference) unforgettable! A special thank you to my workshop attendees for spending an hour or two of your life with me. So many wonderful moments!

For those of you who took my “Something Borrowed, Something New: Mining Myths, Legends, and Fairy Tales to Write Fantasy” workshop, here is the Workshop Handout ready for download as a PDF. Anyone who didn’t take the workshop is welcome to check it out as well. It has a ton of great quotes from fantasy writers about their inspirations.

I’m still recovering from all the excitement. Unlike many writers, I’m not an introvert, but conferences are so mentally demanding, it still takes a lot out of me. It was my first big conference on faculty, and even though I only attended two of the three days, it was a whirlwind, and I’ve been exhausted ever since. And also chomping at the bit to get back into my WIP.

The thing about being a faculty member is that when people talk to you, they expect you to have intelligent, thoughtful things to say. It adds a whole new layer of responsibility, one I was happy to take up, but also a little (a lot!) nervous about. I had lots of wonderful writers come up to me after my workshops and thank me, so at least I can say I didn’t fall flat on my face. (Though really, who is going to come up to you and be like, “Your workshop sucked!) I’m sure I had plenty of not so intelligent words came out of my mouth as well, but overall I’d say it was a successful endeavor.

My biggest fish out of water moment came when I walked into the faculty dinner on Friday night, came up to a partially full table, and asked if there was an open seat. There was, and boy was I lucky for it! Turns out the table was full of agents and editors and one lowly author (me!). The conversations were varied (everything from the mundane topic of camping to the more scandalous one of incest books) and it was great fun to observe the more relaxed side of publishing professionals.

My favorite moments were definitely talking to other creative people. Whether we only had a moment or two to chat (which was the case with many people I talked to because my schedule was so jam-packed) or a more in depth conversation, I was just wowed by the sincerity and dedication of everyone I encountered. The weekend devoted solely to being immersed in the writerly world has done wonders for my own literary soul.

I have lots of great gems of wisdom from the conference (even a few of my own!) and some terrible pictures that I’ll be sharing next week. In the meantime, I’ll be catching up on sleep and writing, writing, writing.