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...

I get until midnight-right?   I am 11 pages from reaching the end of the third and final edit. I will need my head lamp and some snacks, because it's a little murky down there. Apparently in the excitement to write "THE END" and the eagerness to start on book two, someone got little harsh and cliffhangery.  Tsk tsk.  Everyone know that a satisfying ending needs must be. It's the literary equivalent of an after meal espresso and square of dark chocolate. Deceptively simple, but perfectly rich. You want to leave fondly reminiscing over the quality of the meal, not giving in to the pressing need to find your fat pants. After I master that simple little task (snort) I will dose my badguy with that evil juice I have been brewing for some time.  I believe I will be able to do these things before the clock strikes Oct 2. Ah the good old days! Then I will shout "technicalvictory!" and claim my mini-self-prize......a manipedi!...

T he place was dead as a windshield. She gave the bar top another pointless mirror polish and then she felt it. After all these years she could still sense when The Season began, not in her loins or her blood, but an echo deep in the lacuna of her exoskeleton. She lit a smoke, taking a satisfied gander at her retirement plan. She was long past fertile and now she had a different kind of vault to fill. This little hole-in-the-wall had been just the ticket. It was stocked and ready. Soon it would be crawling with every young bug in the city hopped up on hormones and grass clippings, filling the air with a miasma of pheromones thick enough to choke a lady cockroach and definitely turn one on. With oscitated jaws and frisky antennas, bugs would buy her booze and rub legs across the table until it was time to get to the propagating. Inevitably there would be one lone fellow left moping after the last pair skittered out. She’d eat him; head first this year. Some cal...

Today has been all about getting my house cleaned up before my next round of jobs kick in, but wanted to post a little sumpin. I have a major cybercrush on Chuck Wendig at terribleminds (shhh - don't tell) and I took his Friday Flash Fiction challenge.  One story in three sentences.  Here's mine. “A place for everything,” she croaked, lurching to her feet in a swirl of cat and hair. Brushing the crumbs from her chin and clutching the new treasure, she made her way down the narrow path, straightening the newest tower of phone books and tucking stray receipts back into bundles until she reached the bread boxes. “This is your place,” she whispered, nestling the tender crust in amongst its hard and moldy brothers. Clearly influenced by my fall cleaning, though (despite what my husband thinks) I am not a hoarder. So back to my Friday clean-a-thon.  On a final note, here are some things I found in my office today:  3 lost earrings, one wolf's ear, a foam pear, ...

It appears that I have already broken my own blog rules by not posting for an entire week. Nice, Swenson, real nice.  I was imprisoned by an evil sapling? No, no evil sapling to blame. It was writing that kept me from blogging. I have been committed to keeping my Oct 1 deadline to be Done Done with Children of Utrøst.  And boy-howdy is my work cut out for me. The ending is a big hairy mess which needs rewriting. My villain needs a good dose of evil juice, which is currently bubbling on the back burner, still needs a pinch of unicorn blood. And somehow I must trim my word count so it looks good in a bikini. I am all for a good Brazilian, but I think I've already done all the major clearing and will have to get out the tweezers. (Classy-no?) Can all this be done by 10/1/11?  Without resulting in this? Not That Uncommon. You'll be the first to know. A week late. TEN DAYS TO OCTOBER 1!