Kate Warren

Welcome to another edition of Weekend Writing Warriors, that wonderful time when dozens of talented authors post eight sentence snippets of their work for your reading enjoyment.  We authors appreciate your time and support.

This week I am marveling at the number of hits my website is getting from Russia, and the surge in my sales in Japan.  Can I now call myself an internationally acclaimed author?  Probably not, but it's a fun thought.

This week's eight sentences are coming to you courtesy of cold weather, failed recipes, and the letter Q.  Why Q?  It just seems so forlorn and left out sometimes, particularly in Scrabble games.  Anyway, continuing with my historical fiction WIP The DeFord Chronicles, Part II, and using a new method of randomness I give you seven sentences from the end Chapter 6, plus the first of Chapter 7 because it just works better that way. 

Anton DuClerque has just saved a young lady at court from possible rape.  Afterwards, while he comforts her, they share a tender moment.  Leaving the lady in the care of one of the princesses, Anton goes to find her grandfather, Baron Frederick Spencer and inform him of what has occurred.




          Frederick turned at the sound of a voice he did not recognize.

          Anton strode purposefully toward the older man.  He stopped some few feet from the baron and informed him, in clipped tones of the attack upon his granddaughter.

          Frederick did not know with whom to be more angry; the bastard who dared touch Graciela, or the man who now told him of the event with so little apparent feeling.  Would a display of sympathy, some shrinking from the details of the attack not be appropriate when addressing a doting grandfather? He was wondering if he should not find his old sword and run some one or more men through with it when he was startled by a request from the young man standing in front of him.

          "I wish to offer her the protection of marriage."

          "Who are you?"




Perhaps in the future Anton will remember to introduce himself before he requests a lady's hand in marriage. That's my eight for the week.  See you around the other blogs for WeWriWa. 

Kate

P.S.  If anyone is interested, the new method of randomness was to have my daughter choose a number, then search the corresponding chapter for a good snippet. 

Welcome friends and neighbors to another awesome weekend.  Why is it awesome?  Because with the weekend comes posts from the Weekend Writing Warriors, a group of authors who post exactly eight sentences of their work and link back to the WeWriWa website.  Click on the picture at the left or the link above to visit the site and find the list filled with literary deliciousness for your enjoyment!

Side note: there is something terribly odd going on with the font formatting on my website.  I may have to contact someone about it.

As previously mentioned, I am switching back to my historical work-in-progress (The DeFord Chronicles, Part II) for the new year.  The goal is to finally get the first draft finished, and if I'm very lucky, get it published before the end of 2014.  Given that it's been a while since I posted from this one, I considered going back to the beginning, but decided random scrolling is way more fun.  This week's excerpt is brought to you be stir-crazy mothers everywhere (hang in there--school will start again soon!) and by Chapter 21. 

In this excerpt, young Prince Dimitri is delighting in the company of a young woman to whom he has lost his heart.  He has yet to find a way to tell Lilia of his feelings however, and fears that she might not return his regard. 

She was to him the essence of feminine perfection—a model of maidenly virtue and beauty.  Her modesty was unequalled by any at court, and he should know, he had spent his life among young ladies who seemed to think his brother Nicholas and himself the sole ambition in life worth attaining.  Lilia was not aware of her own appeal, and that in and of itself he found utterly charming.  She did not see the way her eyes lit when she heard a beautiful piece of music.  She did not know that her skin glowed in the light of candles.  She did not seem to think herself particularly lovely, and her ears, which the prince found charming, she considered to be her greatest visible flaw.  Lilia thought her hair a tedious shade of dark brown and her eyes unremarkable.  But to Dimitri she had tresses like the coat of the most beautiful horse he had ever seen, and her gaze was expressive beyond words, the color of those speaking orbs seeming to him a mixture of amber and wild honey.




Poor Dimitri.  His thoughts are so poetic, but when he opens his mouth around Lilia, he's rather less eloquent.  That's all from me this week.  See you around the blogs!

Kate

Because it's too early and not hot enough yet for the dog days. 

July has begun.  I don't know where June went, but Camp NaNoWriMo is on again.  I am attempting to participate once again, though with a much lower goal.  This is the second of the month and I have yet to write a word towards the 10,000 I am planning.

I wish I could offer some words of wisdom, sage observations, or witty remarks, but I'm not doing all that well lately with my fibromyalgia.  My internet activities have been sharply curtailed so that there are days I don't get beyond checking email.  So my time is spent with the kids, helping them as best I can, doing a bit of reading when time and headaches permit.  Finally saw Les Miserables and I almost immediately started rewriting the lyrics to form a condensed version.  I made a dress for my daughter out of an old t-shirt, and it didn't turn out too badly.  I've rearranged a few things in the house, but haven't made any major changes.  Oh, and I've designed the dream bathroom for when I win the lottery (note to self: might want to actually buy a lottery ticket once in a while, as this would improve chances of winning).

I am very sorry to report that the local bookstore is closing.  The owners have been great friends and supporters to me in my writing.  There are many who will miss having a bookstore, myself among them.  This is the second, or perhaps third book store the area has lost.  Makes me wonder if our town just isn't big enough, or big enough on reading.  A sad happening regardless.

Switching to a more pleasant topic, for the upcoming holiday we'll be having a small cookout.  My husband will try out his new (used) grill and I will provide the potato salad and balloons stuffed with colorful confetti in lieu of fireworks.  We will also watch 1776, as has become our yearly tradition.

Here's to all my friends across the internet: writers, readers, artists of all kinds, and those who just like cruising websites.  Hope you're all having a wonderful summer.  And to those in America, have a safe and enjoyable Independence Day.

Kate

Dear readers,

You could be forgiven for asking where the heck I've been.  Sometimes I wonder that myself.  It's been an interesting week, to say the least.  My fibro is flaring up worse than it usually does, my computer got hacked by ransomware, the electricity was off for half a day, and it's the last week of school for the kids.

This is the kind of time when I could really use a few extra hands or hours or days of the week.  I have some projects to finish up before I surrender to a summer of few expectations.  My goals are as follows: 1. Survive; 2. Help the boys continue to progress; 3. Work on the house; 4. If possible finish the never-ending manuscript.

Summers are notoriously chaotic at my house, and this one will likely be no exception to that rule.  I'll try to post on a fairly regular schedule, and participate in Weekend Writing Warriors , but I make no guarantees at this point.

I'm writing this rather late at night and my brain wants sleep so I'll keep this short and say that I hope each one of you is having a lovely time and will have an enjoyable summer season.

Kate

Dear readers,

I have spent the last several days in my pajamas.  One of the advantages of working from home, you might say, but normally I do get dressed.  The flu, however, rather put me off my game.  Actually, I'm still not back on my game.  I feel medicated, but I'm not.  Must be tired.  I am finally starting to get better as the fifth member of my family comes down sick.  It is our hope that our youngest boy does not become ill, as he would likely land in the hospital again.  He's the only one who got a flu shot though (seriously rethinking my anti-flu-shot policy now) so in all likelihood he will be fine.

There was a point to this...ah, I remember.  I felt well enough to get dressed today and have been putting some thought into ways to do better in the coming year.  Writing more is one.  Camp NaNoWriMo in April is a definite possibility.  I'm planning to spruce up the old website a bit.  If you have any suggestions of what you'd like to see here, please do let me know.

Early next year Bridging The Gaps will finally be available in paperback!  Yay!  Oh, and I'll get some photos taken so that you can all see my sparkling personality more clearly.

Other than that, there's not much to report right now.  The WIP has stalled due to illness, I'm back to participating in Six Sentence Sunday through the end of that lovely program, and I'll be resting as much as I can for what's left of 2012.  Also, I'm having a birthday on Friday, but you don't have to get me anything.  I'm good.

Here it is Sunday again.  How does that keep happening?  I'd like to thank everyone who drops by and everyone who comments.  Your words are like sunshine on a gray day.

Let's get right to our Six Sentence Sunday, shall we?  This week we're in Chapter Thirty Three.  Ellen, Doug and Stephanie have staged an intervention about DJ's drinking.  DJ has just left in a nasty temper after promising to see a couselor.  



          Ellen sat down and buried her head in her hands.  Doug stood and put a hand on her shoulder.  She looked up.  Their eyes met for a second.  Both were remembering the day he was born, his first bicycle, his little leauge games.
          Other less pleasant recollections were there too: the night Doug had told her about the way his father had destroyed his mother's spirit with his constant verbal and physical abuse; his fears of turning into the same kind of man; the night his mother lay dying in the hospital, pleading with him to forgive his long-dead father, still loving the bastard after everything he'd done to her.


Not a happy six this week.  I hope to find some funny while I'm visiting my fellow Sixers today.  Come along with me, we can laugh together.

Kate

Hello fellow Sixers.  It's been fifteen days since my last post and about a month since my last Six Sentence Sunday post.  What can I say?  Time flies when life is turned upside down.  I've been struggling to find balance and a sense of normalcy.  So far it's not working.  But I figure getting back to work will help.

I'm going to employ the random scrolling method again, though this time I'm using the proof of the paperback of Bridging The Gaps so it might be called random page-flipping.  Here I go and this week's Six will be from... Chapter Nineteen.

Stephanie is getting ready to move into her first apartment.  DJ stops by to help, bringing his girlfriend along.  Stephanie comments that he hasn't done that in a while.  She speaks first.


          "Hey, why did you stop bringing girls around?"
          "Because I got tired of watching Dad flirt with them."
          Stephanie froze. "I didn't know about that."
          "It wasn't something I wanted to share." DJ walked out into the hall and his sister followed.


That's my six for the week.  I'll be around--might take me a while, but I'll be there--checking out the scores of talented authors participating in Six Sentence Sunday.  Hope I see you on their blogs too.

Kate

Welcome back to Six Sentence Sunday in Kate Warren Land. Thank you for taking the time to visit, read, and comment. 

This week I am trying something new.  I'm going to scroll through my manuscript for a random time period and choose six sentences from whichever page I see in front of me when I've stopped scrolling.  Yes, I'm being bold and daring this week.  Here goes:  we have landed on page 197, which puts us in Chapter 31.

Stephanie is under the weather, and unhappy about the fact that her boyfriend Joe has been avoiding her since she said she was falling in love with him.  Her doorbell has continued to ring for several minutes and despite her determination to outwait whatever visitor she might have, Stephanie's decided to take a more pro-active approach.  She's considered breathing on the offender, but she doubts whatever bug she has is lethal.  So she chooses the next best option:


          She grabbed a frying pan, intent on making the doorbell ringer suffer through physical force if viruses wouldn’t do the trick.  She opened the door while raising the pan.  It hit the carpet with a muffled thud as Stephanie stared at a dozen seemingly disembodied long stemmed red roses.  Following the string with her eyes, she looked up to the ceiling where it was draped over a hook, then followed it back down, leaning out through the doorway to see Joe holding the other end of it.  She looked back to the hook.  “The super is gonna be pissed.” 


That's it for me.  It's been a long week and I'm looking forward to a day of visiting all of my favorite Sixers. :)

Kate

It's the last day of the school year.  To the kids that makes this the first day of summer.  To the adults in the house it's more like the end of an order and sanity--what order and sanity we have, that is.  I'm afraid my blog posts may not be as regular for the next three months.  

I feel I should say something wise, or deep...   Nope.  Drawing a complete blank on that line of thinking.  Instead I'll just say that I'm working on a new short piece about life as bookworm, looking forward to my new novel releasing as an eBook this summer, and planning more things to add to this website for your reading pleasure. 

Also thinking about book trailers and wondering if anyone of my acquaintance would be interested in cobbling one together in exchange for a free copy of Bridging The Gaps.  Probably not.  

I apologize for the non-interestingness of this post but I swear my brain is asleep today and I just cannot get it to wake up properly.  Too bad I don't like coffee.  Perhaps I should try chocolate instead.

Going to be a long summer and now I must go and feed people.

Until next time...
Kate