Sunday, July 30, 2006

Almost Showtime!


In two days, Taking the Cake will be available for sale!

Woo-hoo!

At the moment, I'm an interesting combination of excitement, nerves, anxiety, giddiness, and obsessive web-checking. I can only imagine the number of times I'll be hitting the refresh button on the Samhain website as the clock ticks down Monday night (sometimes the books go "live" a wee bit early).

Until then, I'm getting my newsletter ready to send (there's still time to join! Sign up before midnight PST Monday and be eligible to win a free copy of Taking the Cake and a $10 gift certificate to My Bookstore and More, Samhain's bookstore.), updating my website, following up on some promo, and -- oh yeah! -- finishing my next book, which has a swiftly-approaching deadline.

It's a juggling act, but for the moment I've got all my beanbags in the air. Wish me luck on keeping it that way!

Friday, July 28, 2006

Jigsaw Puzzles

My kids love jigsaw puzzles. They enjoy taking tiny pieces of random colors and clicking them together to make a coherent whole. The process is one they can do over and over, even with the same puzzle.

Me? Not so much.

At least not when it comes to my writing.

I've come to the conclusion lately that I'm a linear kind of writer. I like to start at the beginning and continue on until the end. I know there are writers out there who can write completely out of order and then tumble the scenes around until they make sense. More power to 'em.

But I get antsy when I realize that a scene I wrote early on would really work better later in the book, let alone tossing the whole thing up in the air and seeing where the parts land.

Right now, I'm working on my soon-to-reach-deadline time travel novella, Ritual Love. I've got about two chapters left to go. I think.

See, it's summer break, and that means we've been on the road a lot. Thankfully, I've got an Alphasmart Dana (thanks, Mom!), so I can write in the car as we cross the state (or several states, as the case may be). Unfortunately, I've written so many scenes, both at home and on my Dana, that I can't quite keep them straight in my own head. His POV! Her POV! Are they at the grove right now, or in the caves? How many times have they mentioned Columba so far, and what about the grandmother?

I thought I could just download what I wrote on the Dana into the file already on the computer and just cut-and-paste until they fit, but like a jigsaw that has too many pieces, I'm finding that I can't force the scenes together. So I'm printing it out, moving pages around, then re-writing the darn thing so it's coherent.

In the end, I think I'll be a stronger writer because of this process. But it doesn't mean I'm enjoying it at the moment! :)

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Moving On...

Angie made me do it.

No, really.

If it wasn't for her, I'd be happily blogging away semi-regularly over at my original blog, Kati's Korner. But she just had to go and post on her blog about publicity and name recognition.

And I'd been breaking just about every rule of effective blogging. Author name prominent on blog? Nope. Book cover noticeable? Nope. Blogging enough? Nope and nope.

See, I'd started to blog before I sold -- and before I took my author name. So my blog was under a different name, with a different purpose, and wasn't really meshing with my online goals anymore. But I'm a stubborn cuss, and did my best to make it work.

Sometimes, though, you've got to cut bait and start again.

So with one week to go before I'm officially a published author (woo-hoo!), it's time to get with the program. (Especially when my editor -- see above -- is giving out such fabulous advice.)

Without further ado, welcome to Kate Davies Blogs! I'll be blogging about the writing life, life in general, and other fun stuff -- and still cheering on friends and colleagues when they find writing success. I won't be posting on Kati's Korner anymore, but I will leave it up so that those earlier successes are preserved for posterity. Or something like that. :)

In any case, thanks for making the jump with me. And here's a quick question for you:

What interests you most when visiting an author's blog? What are you inclined to read about, and what keeps you coming back?