Books for kids, teens, & those who are young at heart

Tag: blogging

Reintroduction and Updates on Author Katie L. Carroll

Author Katie L. Carroll at the CT Renaissance Faire, cosplaying as Yeselda, witch of Faway Forest, from the Elixir Chronicles.

Welcome to my blog! I have some new followers that I met at the CT Renaissance Faire, so I thought I’d reintroduce myself and my website. I generally post about twice a month, so you won’t be spammed with a million posts from me. I like to introduce myself by saying I write books for young people and those who are young at heart, and you can visit my Author Bio page to learn more about me.

I would be remiss not to also send a big thanks to all my long-time followers who have stuck with me these many years I’ve been blogging. I checked and discovered that my very first blog post was dated May 26, 2008! Every few years I wonder if I should keep blogging, but it seems that I’ll be continuing this venture of mine for awhile still.

The blog space is where I share updates about anything important going on with my books, like teasers and thoughts about my works-in-progress, any new releases or sale prices on my books (stay tuned in the coming weeks for news on sales), and upcoming events. You can learn more about books by clicking on the Books tab on my website and you can buy signed books directly from me by going to the Purchase Books tab.

I also post about things that are on my mind, often related to what I’ve been writing. I have an ongoing series of posts about space exploration and one of my favorite past series of posts was about females in YA. There is the occasional guest post from a fellow author, artist, or creative type or a post that includes pictures of my kiddos and our adventures.

I love connecting with readers and other writers here and welcome comments, so if there’s something particular you’d like me to write about, please do let me know. My Author Visits page and Events page are good places to check out if you want to connect with me further. For those of you interested in the publishing side of writing, I have Self-Publishing Resources as well.

December #InkRipples: The Pressure of End of Year Goals

December is a stressful and busy time of year. For me, it’s not a great month for setting up goals. I’ve never been a fan of New Year’s Resolutions because it feels too contrived and arbitrary. Sure, it’s a new year, but that doesn’t mean I’m in the right place to set up new goals. Maybe I’m still working on my current goals. Maybe I’m swamped and just focusing on the daily task of getting through the days. I certainly don’t need the pressure and stress of forcing myself to declare a goal simply because of the time of year.

So I’m afraid I can’t offer up any great insights into my goals for 2018. I certainly have goals for next year, but most of them on ongoing ones, not ones I’m just starting to think about now. But I’d love to hear about your goals…drop me a comment!

Here’s where I usually do my spiel on how #InkRipples is a monthly meme and December all about goals. However, it looks like fellow #InkRipples founders Kai Strand and Mary Waibel are moving on from the meme. I’ve loved doing #InkRipples for the past three years with Mary, Kai, and all the other bloggers who dropped a ripple in the inkwell, but maybe it’s time for me to move on as well. I do have a new idea for a monthly meme I’ve been thinking about for 2018. I haven’t made any set decisions yet. What would you all like to see on the blog next year?

Announcing the 2017 #InkRipples Themes

I’m pleased to announce that #InkRipples will be back in 2017 with a brand new set of topics! #InkRipples is a monthly meme created by Kai Strand, Mary Waibel, and Katie L. Carroll. We’re all authors, but you don’t have to be to participate.

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The idea of #InkRipples is to toss a word, idea, image, whatever into the inkwell and see what kind of ripples it makes. We provide the topics and will be blogging about them on the first Monday of the month. I often post on the topic on subsequent Mondays as well. You can spread your own ripples by blogging about the topic any day of the month that fits your schedule, just be sure to include links back to the three of us please (Katie, Kai, and Mary).

Or you can simply share your thoughts on social media using the hashtag #InkRipples. You might comment on one of our posts to pay along. Tag us and we’re always happy to share your posts and thoughts to keep those ripples going and intersecting.

There is no wrong way to do #InkRipples (with the exception of following basic human decency!). It’s about having a conversation, sharing ideas, and connecting. So if this sounds at all interesting, please do participate in whatever way you can. And feel free to use any of the meme’s images above or below (created by the wonderful Mary Waibel).

The 2017 topics are:

January – Book covers
February – Genres#InkRipplesblueandgreen
March – Tropes
April – Revision
May – Fairy Tales
June – Blurbs
July – Heroes/Villains
August – Author Options in Publishing
September – World Building
October – Career vs Hobby
November – Finishing that Book!
December – Goals
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December #InkRipples Celebration and Gifts

Before I get to the month’s post, I wanted to share a few things about #InkRipples. Kai Strand, Mary Waibel, and I have decided to continue the meme into 2016, and we’d love for you all to join us (I’ll tell you how below)! You may have noticed we have a new streamlined name of #InkRipples (formerly Ripples in the Inkwell) and brand new images to go along with it.

We also have a new set of monthly topics for discussion in 2016:

January – Travel
#InkRipplesFebruary – Chocolate
March – Feminism
April – Poetry
May – Memories
June – Movies
July – Inspiration
August – Guilty Pleasures
September – Banned Books
October – Masks
November – Heritage
December – Cookies

How can you participate? Glad you asked because there are lots of ways. The idea of #InkRipples is to toss a word, idea, image, whatever into the inkwell and see what kind of ripples it makes. We provide the topics and will be blogging about them on the first Monday of the month. You can spread your own ripples by blogging about the topic any day of the month that fits your schedule, just be sure to include links back to the three of us please (Katie – https://katielcarroll.com/blog/, Kai – http://kaistrand.blogspot.com/, and Mary – http://waibelworld.blogspot.com/). Or you can simply share your thoughts on social media using the hashtag (#InkRipples). Or even just comment on one of our posts. Tag us and we’re always happy to share your posts and thoughts to keep those ripples going and intersecting.

There is no wrong way to do #InkRipples (with the exception of following basic human decency!). It’s about having a conversation, sharing ideas, and connecting. So if this sounds at all interesting, please do participate in whatever way you can. And feel free to use any of the meme’s images (created by the wonderful Mary Waibel). I’ll include them all at the end of the post.

Now for the last #InkRipples of 2015: Celebration and Gifts

I’m always a little reluctant to admit that I’m not very religious (I guess because I feel like people will judge me for it). My husband and I both come from Catholic families, but we don’t practice it ourselves any longer. We’ve always celebrated Christmas, but it’s more about spending time with our families than a specific religious tradition.

Now that we have kids, I’m struggling to figure out how to make the holiday about more than giving and receiving presents, and Santa. I suppose we could discuss Jesus and how he was an important man and what he stood for (because we do emphasize Christian philosophies with the boys, even if we don’t tie them to religion per se), and that Christmas is his “birthday” and that’s why we celebrate. I’m not sure how meaningful that will be to them, though.

Thinking about this has made me wonder what Christmas means to me. Family, first and foremost. Most things for me come down to family. But what else? Is there more? Should there be more? A spirit of giving perhaps. Something beyond that. A spirit of generosity and goodwill toward others…which is something that we try to instill in our boys all the time, not just at the holidays. So maybe not that in and of itself.

I think I need to ponder it some more for myself before I can guide the boys in the right direction. How can I help them understand what Christmas is about if I’m not sure? Maybe they’ll come to have their own meaning of Christmas as they grow.

Anyway, this is just me thinking out loud. I guess for now I’ll muddle through it as best I can (which seems to be how it is with most of these big parenting type subjects!). What do the holidays mean to you and your families?

(And here are the #InkRipples images you may use!)

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Why Do I Bother Blogging Anymore?

Open notebook with a ballpoint pen in the centerThe question of blogging and whether or not it is worth my precioussss (couldn’t help myself with the Gollum reference) time is something I’ve been contemplating lately. Blogging takes up a lot of time.

I’m not the kind of person who can just throw together a blog post. Like all my writing, I have to allow myself ample time to think over what I’m going to write before I even sit down to write it. Then there’s the time it takes to write the post, format it with pictures and links, and proof it (yes, I do proof my posts, though I know mistakes make it through).

Even guest blog posts take time. I like to make sure the posts look nice and to have some uniformity to them, so though I don’t have to write those posts, I still have to format them. Plus there’s keeping track of who is posting when and correspondence with guest posters. Not to mention actually reading their content because of course I’m going to do that before I put it on my blog!

It’s not like I get paid to do this or have any revenue stream coming from my website. In fact, I pay to host the site and for my domain name. And lately I’ve been picky about my unpaid projects, carefully weighing whether or not they are worth it. I don’t have a ton of time for my paid work and I don’t get paid a lot for it, so to do work for free seems kind of crazy.

So I started thinking about why I began blogging in the first place. I went back to my very first post in which I expressed that the Observation Desk (the title of my blog) would be a place for me to share my observations on life. As a fledgling writer, I felt a need to share my thoughts, and clearly thought they were interesting enough to share. I think I also wanted a place to think out loud, so to speak, regardless of who listened (i.e. read).

And I have certainly shared many thoughts over the years. I do come here to articulate my thoughts and put them in a cohesive form. Often I’ll start a post about one thing and it will morph into something else, something I never intended it to be. So even though I think about what I want to say before I begin writing, I often figure out something else I wanted to say. In a lot of ways, I began blogging for myself and I still do that. I don’t keep a personal journal for my own thoughts (I keep one for story ideas and development, one for conference notes, and one for each of the boys), so this is my place for that.

Then the blog also became a place for me to feature other writers, illustrators, and creative people. I love featuring other content creators, reading what they think about and how their creative process looks. This was an aspect of the blog I never intended when I first started it, but guest bloggers have really helped to shape the way I now blog. Plus, it does take the pressure off me a little because I’m not the only one providing new content.

So the blog is my place to think in journal form (keeping in mind others will be reading) and a space to feature other creative types and share their works and thoughts.

Then there’s you, the readers. You contribute by reading, sharing, or commenting, and are one of the main reasons I keep the blog going because I feel like some of you actually care about what is going on with my life and this is how we keep in touch. And there have been many times when I’ve been in a tough place in my life and you all helped pick me up. That’s not something to take lightly.

There’s more, too. As I was preparing my presentation for the NESCBWI conference, I realized a lot of the ideas and techniques I was presenting originally came from a blog post idea. A furthering of the idea that this is my place to gather and hone my thoughts.

Does my blog make me any money? Does it directly sell any of my books? Not really. But it does have value. It’s a community, my community. It’s the place where I often start the conversation and where I invite others to start one. It’s the place where I sometimes talk with myself and work out ideas and thoughts.

So that’s why I’ve decided to continue blogging, even as I take stock of my life and look to simplify (I’m always looking to do this in one way or another). The blog takes time, time I could be spending with my family, time I could be writing, time I could be taking care of myself…but I believe it is time well spent.

Why do you blog or read blogs?

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