Some changes…

Tennessee barn (Photo credit: knitgrrldotcom)

 

What do you think of the new blog design? I like the simpleness and the misty setting reminds me of where my books are set: in the fictional Akara Mountains in Tennessee. The bridge is an image that particularly jumps out at me because it’s important in my stories. Hint: the dead ones often walk there, waiting for unsuspecting trespassers. I’ve updated my “About Me” page and added a new one with members of YAFF links and other writerly ones. I will still be posting book reviews and updates/writer advice hopefully on Tuesdays and Thursdays still. Although this schedule may take a hit until the new year gets in swing. The only thing that may change about it is that I may post every other week. Although I LOVE blogging and keeping in touch with all of you, it’s getting harder to find topics that aren’t covered elsewhere. Another big issue: I need writing/editing time and a lot of times that’s pushed out of the way in favor of the blog. If I don’t work on my books, I won’t be able to strive to reach my goal of publication. I’ve been torn in this reality for half of this year, now I’m making a choice: my stories need to come first. I’m sure you all understand how hard it is to find time as it is to do this thing I love. Life gets in the way. I’ll slowly be backing off a lot of social media sites as well. They just occupy too much of our hours. Not that I don’t enjoy them, but the time just whittles away so fast and nothing’s left for storytelling. I know this may sound a little like “a goodbye” but it’s not. It’s just a pause to refocus on my creativity. Until my next post, take care, and God bless!!

 

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First Book Review of 2012

First Book Review for the Year 2012

Traci Kenworth

Featuring: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

 

YA Supernatural Horror. Tor Teen.

 

“Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills people story.”

 

I actually read a hundred-and-fourteen pages of this last year, but carried it over into this one. Let me start of by saying about the caption above: this book is anything but average. I truly would have finished this book in one day if I hadn’t been so busy with holidays and the rush of the New Year. I came at this book as a reader, a writer, and someone who wanted to learn as much as they could about it by studying it. That means picking it apart to help with my own writing, gleaning any secrets that I could, to make my own work better. I was both challenged and excited by what I learned.

Theseus Cassio Lowood, a ghost-hunter, is truly a character that goes through a major story arc of being so alone in his world to opening up to let others in by the end. In fact, most of the major characters go through their own growth. From Carmel, the prom queen, forced to tackle a part of life she didn’t know about to Thomas, the geek who’s forced to become a hero, to Anna, whose story we learn and come to fear.

Studying the inciting incidents in the story gave me a stronghold I hope for my own. From the beginning when stakes rise as Carmel and Thomas start to get closer to the truth about who Cas really is and what he does for a living. And we have Anna and Cas confronting each other, neither sure what to do about the other, both feeling an “attraction” toward the other. Cas has a hard time admitting he needs friends/allies. He wants to continue his old life of move, hunt, kill. Little does he know what life has in store.

Cas got into the ghost-hunting business when he was old enough, taking his father’s athame (knife) said to link him to it by a blood tie. His ancestors forged the knife, bled upon it, to put the spirits down. He belongs to the knife, and it to him. He doesn’t know what becomes of the spirits when he kills them and his father taught him never to ask. When he learns Anna’s story of how she was murdered, Cas can’t kill her. Instead, he frees her.

When his athame is stolen it weakens Cas and he must go through more changes to be reunited with it. Anna warns there is a darkness attached to the knife. More bodies start to appear with Anna freed and Cas must decide whether he believes Anna is guilty of their murder or not. And how he plans to deal with the growing horror. The resulting battle is fierce, tender, and explosive.

My thoughts on the book? I loved to see the knock-down, drag-out justice of Cas. I worry about events that are clues to a sequel book or books. This is a story that grabs you and makes you care about Cas and his friends. So worrying about them in the future is good. I was truly thrown by the twists and turns of the story and discovered the truth along with Cas. I knew something was up, of course, but couldn’t put my finger on what. And that’s the mark of an excellent book. I think Kendare Blake did an excellent job bringing the characters to life and the end was a smash. Not what you’d expect, but what you’d hope for with the people involved.

Overall, I give it a 4 ½ *, the ½ because I wanted a “happier” ending. Still, it’s a keeper and I’ll never forget the journey of this book. Stephen King says you have to learn to be swept away by a good book before you can write one, here’s hoping I learned the lessons from this one that I can use to improve my own.

So have you read Anna? What do you think, feel, like, hate etc. about it?

Next up: The Nine Lives of Chloe King  by Liz Braswel writing as Celia Thomson. Another YA Horror.

 

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Learning as You Go

Learning as You Go

Traci Kenworth

 

So are you one of those authors that wade deeply into research before they write a single word? Or do you do enough research to get you by and then continue to do so as you go? I’m one of the latter. I can hear the gasps out there. Lol. I believe firmly in research but sometimes you got to get the words down and then go back for further investigation. This isn’t to suggest that you shirk your responsibility to study things. Face it, readers are much more savvy these days. They know things you might not think.

Translations. That a certain restaurant/place was written wrong. Or an entire tribe/nation’s background is different from what the book proposes. I’m probably from the fool me generation in, as in I trust the author not to make these mistakes, but it happens. I’m not here to say it’s okay to dupe your reader, in fact, most of the time they find out the truth in some way and then it could be hard to sustain a story’s believability from the same author again. No, I’m about to tell how I do my own research into things.

First, of course, comes setting. Unless your creating your own world (and even then you need to know the rules of it), you must know your background. I personally, like to make up towns/cities/places etc. I enjoy the challenge. Of course, I usually base it to some degree on somewhere I’ve been or would like to go. I build the houses, neighborhoods, people, pets, and so on as needed in my mind. Sometimes from putting photos together to get the type of building I want. Other times from a description someone gives me as they talk about the state in question. Ideas abound about us, but we have to ground them in fact.

So after I choose my residence, I study my characters. What sort would live there? What classes? What nationality? I love to reflect on how America’s a melting pot, thus I try and include all races, poor and rich, young and old. I even research what kind of pets they would have. It’s important to get the right fit for your character. I.E. A little old lady wouldn’t normally go for an active, horse-of-a-dog. Spend some time getting the feel of your families. Their needs, their wants, their handicaps. It will make for a solider base to them.

Again, however, you can delve into who they are as you go along. For instance, right now, one of my characters belongs to a cult, though she’s not aware of such due to their brainwashing methods. Now, when I began writing, I knew my character but I didn’t know about groups like these. Sure, I’ve heard, read, and watched TV about them, but I needed to go deeper into this to pull the character off. She’s complicated and the more I write her, the more research I do into who she is, what she wants, and the triggers that manipulate her. It’s a scary world to look into, but it has to be done if she’s to remain true to what she represents.

My point is, you don’t always know every little detail, every little twist that you’re going to take along the way in a story. Therefore it’s okay to start writing the first draft and then go back and explore what you need. If I spent six months pouring through books before I wrote the title of my manuscript, it would be in trouble. You need to stretch your wings, and as you’re doing so, read into the area in question, highlight ideas you’d like to go through further. Just have everything gelled together before you send the book off. Check. Check. Check your facts. Even writing in the same region as I do, there is often something I need to look up. I don’t hesitate to do so, it could save me pie in the face in the end.

 

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My Writing Journal

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My Writing Journal

Traci Kenworth

 

With the New Year at hand, I’ve decided to embark on some things I’ve thought about doing in the past, but didn’t get around to it. Yesterday, I pulled out my first book for reading in 2012 (although I read a hundred-and-fourteen last month), Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake. I plan on studying the book to learn what I can from it and its author. I will do reviews on each book I read this year, something I’ve only done for a few in the past.

I hope this will encourage me to read more. Often I get in the pit of finishing a book and not wanting to pick up another to find it of a lesser journey than the one before but by keeping tabs on my reading, I hope to discourage that pattern. And keeping the journal will help me to remember the books I’ve read. Often they muddle together, unless a really great one which often gets a further journey opened when the movie/s come out.

I’m REALLY like Anna so far. It reminds me of my favorite TV show Supernatural with the Winchester brothers. Except there’s only one (Cas) and a handful of misfits for this line of work who often get in his way, and their all teenagers. There are other differences, of course, I don’t mean to imply the books a straight route to the Supernatural phenomenon. It’s just his occupation reminds me of the show. You should pick up this book if you haven’t yet, it’s a shining star. I’ll review it further when I finish reading it. And I’m so looking forward to Kendare Blake’s next one.

I think this writing journal will be good for me to keep track of my progress, to see where I’ve been, what I’ve learned, and what’s still out there to pick up on. I plan to do a journal each year just to see how many pages I can fill and how many books I can clear off of my TBR piles. I’ll also visit the library regularly to keep up on new releases I can’t find in the stores in my area. It’s going to be a fantastic year for books, I just know it.

So, do you keep a journal of what you read for the year, or do you have one of those much-sought-after memories that can recall everything about a book you’ve read? I envy you if the latter. My memory has always been shallow. Lol. I know I’ve read a book and liked it but can’t recall the characters names or what exactly they went through. Yeah, a journal will help me to cement things more and grow as a writer and a reader.

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Writing Goals

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Writing Goals

Traci Kenworth

 

What are yours for the new year? After reading a recent blog about diversifying your genres so that you don’t end up stuck in one type, limiting the type of writing you can do, I’ve decided to try my hand at something other than horror this year. I want to be able to write the novel I want to write and not be pigeonholed into writing what others expect me to. That doesn’t mean that I plan to give up writing horror. It just means I want to explore new bridges alongside the old.

I have a time-travel and a western waiting in the wings I will pull out sometime this year. As well as delve into something perhaps I haven’t tried before. A writer pal of mine has done this for herself this past year and she’s not only succeeded at this different genre, but excelled. SO proud of her. Her success (as well as that blog) inspired me to think outside the box.

My first love, believe it or not, was fantasy. So, it might be time to look into writing something on that behalf. Marion Zimmer Bradley once gave me the advice to wait to write fantasy till you’ve lived. I think I’m ready, at last, to do so. I have a MG (I think) on my mind that I might try my hand at writing. It would be a good departure for me and stretch my wings. Yes, I think I’ve decided what I’ll do after I finish editing my last book, and writing my current and see where the road takes me.

So what are your goals this year? Do you intend to try something new? Even if it doesn’t work out, it’ll be an experience to learn from. And so, I’ll end with a favorite line of mine: “Have fun storming the castle.”

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The Magic of a New Year

Image by joka2000 via Flickr

The Magic of New Year’s

Traci Kenworth

 

Soon the clock will tick down to a new year. I love the possibilities that come along with a promise of starting again fresh. We can change our outlook, our lives, our reality with just a few simple decisions. I find it such a magical and powerful time of year. Everything I’ve done this past year has built up to these last moments.

Do I have regrets? Not a one. I came further and faster this year than any other with my writing. I’m subbing and getting good responses (can’t ask for better than that). I’ve grown in my work so much. I know, of course, I still have a long way to go, but I also know I’m on the right road at last. For so many years I listened to people telling me what I couldn’t do, it’s such a relief to find out that not only can I do it, but I can enjoy it that much more.

Sure, I wanted to snag that agent this year, there’s still a few days left for that to happen, but I chalk things up to more experience. This year, I plan on continuing to strengthen my stories, and explore new opportunities. I’m going to read more, something that’s detrimental to the success of a writer. I’m going to do my best to learn more of my craft, to not cry over the mistakes, but shove forward with a new perspective.

I’ve got everything I need right here. All I have to do is use it and collect information to improve what I know. So, I’m going to continue with the invaluable bibles I’ve created for each of my books, do my research, and trust my instincts. I hope to discover the perfect agent/client relationship for me. I want to tell people I’m a writer and not cringe in spite of their disbelief, or scorn. I plan to be proud of myself and what I’m doing. After all, it was my decision to step into this pursuit of publication and I intend to charge ahead with all the hope and faith that I can do it.

So, here’s hoping I crack that code that wins an agent this year, and then go on to a successful partnership with an editor and her staff. One thing’s for sure, every step I take is going to be surer in the days ahead because I can finally admit to people who I am, warts and all. How do you plan to pursue your goals this new year? Always move a step up that ladder, when you stop growing, you stop learning. And life becomes dull. Don’t let that happen. Embrace the awesomeness the road ahead holds for you, no matter where you are in life. Good luck!!

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