New Year, New Look for Author Web Site

It took me nearly three hours, but www.TraceyCramerKelly.com is finally reorganized and ALMOST up-to-date (I still need to write a good teaser for True Surrender). Not "done" of course - a web site is never "done"!

But I AM ahead of schedule (for once) - I had targeted January 1 as the 'launch' date for the new site.

Whilst working on this, I came across a treasure trove of short essays and commentaries I wrote as part of the virtual blog tour last year. It made me realize just how far I've come (sometimes I lose sight of that).

One of the main questions during the tour was how long I've been writing. I wrote during high school but never with any intention of publishing. In college, my creative outlet was music. Later I got into the beaded jewelry craze, but that phased out after my son was born (beads and toddlers don't mix well). In the meantime, I would write when the muse struck, and eventually I had a half-dozen novels (or, more specifically, parts and pieces of). What you see on the site now are those seeds finally growing into something!

When Inspiration Strikes...

I found this quote the other day, and it struck me as TOTALLY appropriate to my writing life...

"Before I had kids, I wrote when inspiration struck. Now I find inspiration strikes when I have childcare and enough caffeine." – Brad Parks

I couldn't have said it better!

Advice for Aspiring Authors

That's just one of the interview questions from Katie Bug today. Here's what I said:

Forget about writing what you know (that would be so boring for most of us!), but do your homework to make it as real as possible (but don't get too carried away - it is fiction, after all!). Don't write for a particular goal or market; write what makes your heart sing.

Read the rest of the interview here!

What is the Hardest Thing about Writing?

Today I'm being "hosted" by Book Junkie! Here's one of the questions:

For you, what is the hardest part of writing a novel? Concept, Characterization, Plotting, Writing the story, Synopsis/Query letter writing, etc.?

I think it's ALL hard! Thank goodness I don't have to do it for a living! Characterization is a challenge. I do better if I take time up front to flesh out the characters before I start writing, but if I've been inspired, I'm off and writing before I've got a full 'picture' of a particular character in my head. And writing the story often comes down to just putting my butt in the chair. I often find it more enjoyable to just daydream and fantasize about it...getting it onto the computer screen is much more difficult!

Favorite Writing Quote

I recently came across this quote from Margaret Sackville:

"Great imaginations are apt to work from hints and suggestions, and a single moment of emotion is sometimes sufficient to create a masterpiece."

That's ME exactly! (Although we could debate the definition of "masterpiece"...) There will be one grain of truth to something I write ... one tiny piece of a scene that was factual ... before my imagination ran away with it!

ME - a Writer??

I figured it would be a routine trip to the library. I go there often, and this time I stopped to chat with Diana (the head librarian). As I exited the library, a teenage girl stopped me to ask about Last Chance Rescue. Her questions boiled down to essentially this: how did I become a writer?

My attempt at answers felt entirely inadequate!

Fifteen minutes later, back in my car after picking up my daughter at daycare, I reflected on this question. The truth is, I've written all my life. But I have never thought of myself as a "writer"! Why, I wonder? Because I have so many other identifications (mom, wife, daughter, sister ... business owner ... motorcyclist ... you get the idea) that it had not occurred to me to add "writer" to that list?

Or is it because I don't "write" as a job? Honestly, I couldn't do it - it is HARD WORK! (And, I might add, not exactly a highly-paid occupation.) In fact, I wonder sometimes WHY I have undertaken a second one!

But the answer is "Yes" - I am a writer. I'm still getting used to that idea. The day I held my first copy of Last Chance Rescue was the first time I thought: oh my gosh, I'm an AUTHOR! Was it easy? NO WAY!! But do I like the feeling? YOU BET!