Kate Swenson

I decided to join the NaNoWriMo Madness this year!  Nerd Power! Some selected blurb bits from their website... National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000 word, (approximately 175 page) novel by 11:59:59, November 30. What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time. Who: You! We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together. Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To give yourself permission to write without obsessing over quality. In 2010, we had over 200,000 participants. More than 30,000 of them crossed the 50K finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. My plan is to jumpstart book two in the Children of Utrøst series.  I was tempted to...

It's Halloween, I am working in a Haunted Forest, and the villains of my novel are the guilty parties holding up Operation Settle4NovemberFirst . I have evil on the brain. Imagine what my (already notoriously crazy) dreams are like! Upon the advice of my beloved Crit Group, I have been trying to scary up my bad guys. But there is a distracting inner whisper and I am starting to question how far I really want to push in this direction.  It is a fantasy novel, but there is a fine line between evil scary and EEEEV-ILL funny.  Which got me thinking... What are the necessary elements in a villain cocktail?  Classic Evil-Tini Recipe 1 Part Bitters to the Core 1 Part Anger Management Issues Muddle Reality with Twisted Past Squeeze of Lemon (Directly Into Wound)  Shake Violently And just how much can you tinker with the basic recipe before you go from refreshing variation to cough medicine? Utrøst's Evil-Tini Recipe 1 P...

Having readers with mad crafting skills is a definite bonus. It's a strange and wonderful experience to be gifted with a tangible interpretation of something that once existed only in your own mind.  I consider them (and their creators) to be amongst my greatest treasures. My friends The Henrys made this beauty, inspired by a cup and saucer in this excerpt. ** From Our Barney Google Line.... Charlie held up a hand, asking Pavel to wait. Scrambling onto the kitchen counter to reach the highest cupboard, Charlie gingerly retrieved a tiny tea cup and saucer. They were both black and covered with googlie eyes, and the pupils jiggled a bit when Charlie tapped the cup against the saucer in three sets of three before rinsing it in the sink. “How did you even remember where that was?” Virgil hadn’t seen the tiny dishes for years. It had been a part of Viv’s collection of Odd Little Kitchen Things. When the twins were younger, she had often brought them out to be admi...