As much I wish I could just write and read all the time, life gets in the way - day job, family, book promotion (Travelers), house work. But, I have 7 glorious days off from work, plus two weekends. That's 11 days of unencumbered time. My holiday to do list - write, read, hang with fam, repeat. I hope to get a lot of all 3 done. So, here's what's on my reading list.
Today's T-shirt Tuesday is actually not inspired by one of my husband's t-shirts. However, he did buy it for my daughter because of her rather large obsession with unicorns. I'm pretty sure she doesn't actually think they're real. But, she may...and maybe she's not completely wrong...
Once upon a time, before I’d even decided to try to publish my own book (The Travelers, Saguaro Books), I was unaware of the world of independent publishers. I didn’t read books by small presses and I definitely did not read anything self-published. I determined my reading list based friends' recommendations or reviews in large media outlets. (Don’t judge. I just didn’t know better at the time!) Until one day, a friend recommended that I read this new book “Lost Girl”...
I recently wrote a blog post on my characters favorite books and the books they secretly love (eg, book guilty pleasure). It was fun so I want to do a variation on the theme. This time it's my characters favorite songs and the songs they secretly love but don't want to admit to anyone. (You know, like you secretly love Dancing Queen but won't admit it.)
A few weeks ago my family and I were in the airport, preparing for an overseas trip. In the waiting lounge, I said hello to a young girl, aged around 4 years old, who was waiting with her dad in the seating area. She was very social and immediately engaged with me. Right away, I asked her if she liked reading and what her favorite book was. She absolutely lit up! Her favorite book was Clara the Cookie Fairy and she had the book with her! We sat together for the next 15 minutes or so, reading this delightful and amazing book together. This experience reminded me of the inspiring and creative post below by Lisa Bloom from 2011. It’s an eye-opening approach to engaging a girl about her mind via books instead of what she’s wearing.
If you love books, you love to get books. Since tomorrow is Cyber Monday, it’s a great time to find and buy books to give to others this season. In honor of that, I plan to donate part of the proceeds from the sales on amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com from my YA fantasy novel, The Travelers, to charity. But, what charity, you ask? Excellent question. Deciding on that was difficult...
Everyone has a guilty reading pleasure, right? Well, in my world my characters do also. Therefore, in this blog I’m going to talk about the books my characters would recommend and their secret guilty pleasures, including books on vampires, zombies (ooo, shiver), pants (yes, you read that right, pants) and Mandalas. What's a Mandala you ask? Read to find out!
Today is Black Friday, if you're braving the malls and high traffic areas - good luck! We're going to play table tennis and watch Gilmore Girls. Tomorrow, however, I will brave the shopping areas because it is Small Business Saturday, at least according to Kristen Bell. (You may know her from Frozen fame and the great new show The Good Place. She'll always be Veronica Mars to me. Go Marshmallows!) She's done a series of commercials to support the day and they worked on me, at least! I'm in!
It's finally Friday. And I'm in much need of a distraction. So let's have some silly Friday Fun and pretend for 5 minutes that all the world's problems could be solved if we just cared about each other as much as we cared about our dogs. I mean. I get it. I love my dog, even when she wakes me up at 5 am to throw up on my carpet (which she does more frequently than I'd like). How could I not love that face though? Look at her, she's adorable and she loves books! She's perfect! Alright, so we've established dogs are adorable and great. Let's take this up a notch. Since I had so much fun writing a blog on “if my characters were Barbie dolls,” I thought I’d try a variation on this theme. In this blog, I’m going to do, if my characters from The Travelers were dogs.
K.L. Kranes 