Category: GKP Writing News

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GKP Writing News

Planting Garlic

I needed another writing project. Not really. But I seem to have one. So many posts I write are about my garden that I now have an essay on planting garlic.

Ozark Gardening

Most gardening books are about northern states. What works in those places might work in the Ozarks, but probably won’t quite. The Ozarks is unique for gardening.

This area is far enough north to have seasons with occasional really cold winters. The cold usually doesn’t last for more than a week or two so the ground doesn’t freeze and stay frozen. Snow melts sometimes as it falls or within a few days.

The area is far enough south to get hot, humid weather. Along with this is intense sun that can burn up vegetable plants. Few vegetables can withstand full sun in the Ozarks.

garlic is the new garden beginning
I did use a trench in the mulch when I used hay flakes. Now I use loose hay bedding and make little wells for each clove. Either method works as long as the mulch is open above the clove so the plant can grow up quickly.

Climate Change

We had a severe drought back in 2012. The hay burned up before it could be cut. Creeks, ponds and wells went dry.

After that year, the weather has become more and more erratic. Gardening methods of many years suddenly failed.

Rain patterns changed. Now there are months of lots of rain, then months of drought. Rain often comes as downpours triggering flash floods.

Even so, Ozark gardeners rise to the challenge. And I am one of them.

Planting Garlic

Some crops are staples in my garden. There are the usual summer ones of tomatoes and peppers. I add okra and squash, both winter and summer.

Another annual crop is garlic. For thirty years I have defied gardening advice by planting garlic in the same bed. I plant it under heavy mulch without waiting for freezing temperatures.

There are now two garlic beds in my garden. The cloves go into the beds in late September. I’ve planted it already and am now watching for those garlic blades to poke up above the mulch.

By frost I hope to have two beds with rows of garlic plants. This is another reason besides having my own garlic in the kitchen: planting garlic is a success story in my garden.

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GKP Writing News

Used To Be

So much has happened here at High Reaches since I finished writing “My Ozark Home” leaving the book more nostalgia than reality. As is often true with nostalgia, I miss the place as it used to be.

cover for "My Ozark Home" by Karen GoatKeeper
The five years since this book was written have brought many changes to High Reaches. That doesn’t change the beauty I saw when selecting the photographs for the book.

The Creek

When I was teaching, there was a big aquarium set  up as a creek riffle. It had darters, broadhead minnows, crayfish, snails living in it. Those things do still try to live in the creek now, but it is a never ending challenge.

Floods have washed out the banks leaving cliffs along the edges. The small ones are about eighteen inches, but many are over two feet. Deep pools are now moved to other places .

Crossing the creek to the pastures and hills on the other side used to be easy. It is still possible to get across on foot. The tractor can not cross so the hay fields are growing up in brush.

ruined bridge
The planks are now wired onto the I-beams so, we hope, floods won’t wash so many away. The goats carefully walk down to the single plank to get onto the bridge planks and off the two planks at the other end. Most of the goats do. Pest and Rose prefer to cross the creek even with the bank being so steep.

The Bridge

There was no bridge across the creek when we moved here. We put one in using cement pillars and I-beams with planks across it. The goats, us, the tractor could all go across.

The bridge is still there – sort of. One end has been shifted and sunk. Careful placement of planks makes it possible to get across for the goats and us for now.

As the banks continue to wash away, the distance to what is left of the bridge gets greater. Another flood or two and the planks won’t reach anymore.

Old Landmarks

The pile of old stumps is almost gone. Many of the big trees, especially ones along the creek, have fallen.

Not all is gloom. The pawpaw trees are now tall. In a good year, the kitchen overflows with their fruit.

New plants have moved in to replace some that have disappeared. There are times I find even these in new places.

Still, as we have gotten old, the place has gotten old. I’m glad to have my book to remind me of the way the place used to be.

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GKP Writing News

Writing About Goats

My High Reaches Nubian goat herd keeps getting smaller. Although this is intentional, it isn’t easy. One way of coping is writing about goats.

Last June marked fifty-one years Nubian dairy goats have been a part of my life. Losing them will put a big hole in it as they are my milk source, my manure and mulch source, my friends.

Writing About Goats Isn’t New

My first book, “Goat Games”, was about goats. More books with goats in them followed: “Dora’s Story”; “Capri Capers”; “Hopes, Dreams and Reality”; and “For Love of Goats”.

When I wrote these, goats were in them because they fit well. I was writing about something I was familiar with. It’s different now.

Now, when I am writing about goats, I am remembering them. It keeps them in my life, even as they fade from my barn.

High Reaches Nubian dairy goat herd
At one time High Reaches had over 40 goats in the herd. Now it is down to ten counting Kingpin.

Opal and Agate: Partners in Adventure

Both Opal and Agate are real goats. Only Opal is still in my herd. Their fictional counterparts are more than they have been. They are stand ins for the many kids that have been a part of my High Reaches herd over the years.

Kids are kids, whether they have four legs or two. Goat kids are cute – just check out some of the many videos and pictures online. That makes them good subjects for picture books.

Best Intentions

I started the year with six books to work on. None of them are done and the year is racing to a conclusion. Life got in the way as it likes to do.

“Ducks Love Hats” happened. I am working my way through the publishing steps with it now.

Ship Eighteen from The Carduan Chronicles was going well. I had plans to move on to Life’s Rules and finish that draft. Instead, there is a major problem with the Ship Eighteen draft. Correcting it will take careful planning and a major rewrite.

Sketches for the first Opal and Agate book are in my sketchpad. I hope I can get more of them done soon. I will, if life doesn’t get in my way again too soon.

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GKP Writing News

Arts Rolla Council Writing Contest

An email arrived a week or so ago announcing the Rolla Arts Council Biannual Writing Contest. I left it sitting there thinking I had nothing to enter. I’ve done very little serious writing the past couple of years, mostly picture books.

This is the only contest I do enter. Perhaps I should enter more, but they take time both to find and enter them and to write something to enter. The email stares at me several times a week.

Rolla Arts Council Writing Contest

There are three categories to enter: fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Although I do write haikus, these are not really useful for this contest. That leaves the two writing categories.

Both can be excerpts of longer projects. That’s fine. However, 3000 words isn’t very long, often not even a chapter. And I’ve entered previous contests with two of my novels I am working on already.

Possible Fiction Entry?

There is the one I am presently editing. It’s the second of the Carduan Chronicles on Ship Eighteen. Perhaps I can enter part of it. I even know which chapter, although I would need an explanatory paragraph for it. After all, the judge won’t know about the Carduans or, in this case, the ship’s journey.

The first chapter of the book on Ship Nineteen took second place. It would be nice if this entry in the series also took a place.

Character for Arts Rolla Council writing contest
Water striders are fun to watch skating across the water surface. Their feet have hairs holding air to keep them from sinking. These Ozark creek residents must be included in a picture book about exploring an Ozark creek.

Possible Nonfiction Entry?

I am working on picture books. These don’t normally work well without the illustrations and these are not part of the entry.

There is the Chemistry Project. Science activity books aren’t appropriate for the contest.

Perhaps I can start a different picture book, science based with more text than a traditional picture book. Topic? Perhaps a series of books ultimately about 100-inch hikes. The first one is about exploring my Ozark creek?

It is a place to start. With six projects already in progress, I really don’t need another one. But I do want a Rolla Arts Council Writing Contest entry. And I need reasons to take time off to go walking.

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GKP Writing News

Finishing “Ducks Love Hats”

Don’t let anyone tell you picture books are easy to write. All they are doing is showing how little they know about writing. And I really know this is true finishing “Ducks Love Hats”.

At First

There was no plan to really write a book in the lesson plans for Creating Picture Books. Even the original idea sounded flimsy, not nearly enough to fill 32 pages.

How could so few people even dream of creating a book? This was especially true as we only met four times formally. Still, we latched onto the dream.

Finally !

Every page of this little book took hours of work to complete. As these pages were assembled out of pieces done by class members, some of these pages took over 20 layers for the backgrounds, the ducks, the people and the hats.

I am slow with this. Each item had to be created, resized, added to the main page. Did it need to be above or below the other items? Those messy edges had to be erased.

"Ducks Love Hats" cover
Meet the cover of the new picture book “Ducks Love Hats”. It is illustrations only so you can make the tale as complex as you want. The book will be available by the end of September, 2025.

Covers and Title Page

I read around 200 picture books a year. They have a wide variety of illustration styles, many approaches to covers and title pages.

All the book collaborators decided on a color scheme, a title, illustrations. I began with the title page, except it worked better as the cover. What to do for the title page?

Perhaps I could repeat the cover which is sometimes done. However, a different design is better. The new design didn’t match the color scheme, so it changed.

Finishing “Ducks Love Hats”

When working on a book project, it’s easy for a writer to get so involved mistakes sneak in unnoticed. You see or read what you think should be there, even when it isn’t.

The final step is for other people to look the pages over. Then the book will truly be done.

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GKP Writing News

Editing This Picture Book

Finishing a picture book isn’t so different from finishing a novel. Of course, “Ducks Love Hats” has no text, but each and every illustration must be checked and rechecked. If I’m lucky, I will catch any mistakes while editing this picture book.

How the Illustrations Were Done

The Creating Picture Book course started with five young people. Family problems took three of them away just as we were starting to draw the parts of the illustrations.

What I was left with were the four ducks in a variety of poses and eight hats. I had already volunteered to do the backgrounds. What I lacked, and two of those who had to leave were good at, were the people. People are a big challenge for me.

All of the ducks and hats were scanned into my computer. All of the background pages were scanned in.

Next, I did people outlines. There were two family groups of parents and two children. They did various things so I needed lots of different poses for each one. One saving part was being able to reuse some of the poses as the families came at different times in the story. Once the outlines were scanned in, I painted the people.

Using layers each person, duck and hat were put into the illustrations. I like using layers for this as I can resize and move them as needed.

"Ducks Love Hats" page
A happy duck family swims away with their hats in “Ducks Love Hats” by Karen GoatKeeper and others.

Assembling the Picture Book

The layered illustrations are merged, saved and inserted into the book. The book itself is a Word document with 0.1” margins.

Then editing this picture book began. Hats were missing. Ducks were missing. People weren’t in the right places.

This is why I save the layered illustration as well as the merged one. I can open the layered one, make the needed changes, merge and insert the corrected illustration.

Final Touches

Title page and cover are the last things I do. However, editing this picture book will go on as several people look over the pages of the book itself without the title page and cover. I’m hoping they don’t find any more mistakes.

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GKP Writing News

Changing World of Writing

How the world of writing has changed! Writers today are very blessed with the technology available to them.

In the Past

I’ve just finished reading “Humboldt’s Cosmos” about Alexander Humboldt, a leading scientist around 1800 (review on Goodreads). All he had for taking notes was paper and pencil or, maybe a goose quill or fountain pen.

Over the five years Humboldt was exploring in South America, Mexico and Cuba, he wrote thousands of pages of observations and measurements. He was one of the last generalists, doing work that laid the foundations for vulcanology, meteorology, archeology, ecology and more. Plus he discovered and catalogued thousands of new plants. Animals were in his field of study as well.

His notes were precious as there was only one copy. Preparing them for publication was done in pencil or fountain pen giving only one copy.

All those famous writers of the past faced the same conditions. No wonder the typewriter was a big hit.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
This book would never get done on a typewriter. Using a computer I could add the illustrations correctly sized and do some fancy fonts for the cover.

Typewriters

The old typewriters were no fun to type on. It took lots of practice and strong fingers. An advantage was being able to make a carbon copy.

Don’t think there was this special paper. There was carbon paper. It had powdered carbon on one side. A sheet was placed between two pieces of plain paper and fed into the typewriter. When a typewriter key hit the top paper, it pressed a carbon letter onto that second sheet.

Correcting mistakes was very difficult. Accuracy was highly valued in a typist.

Typewriters improved. Paper improved. Electric models appeared. The scripts could be changed. But the writing was still one row of words, the same size, the same intensity – forget bold.

Today’s World of Writing

Typewriters gave way to word processers. Then came the personal computers. This opened up so many options for the writer.

Make a mistake? Back up and retype, no correction fluid or eraser required. Want to move a sentence or paragraph? Highlight it, click on it and drag it to a new location. Prefer a different font? Pick one. Bold it. Italicize it.

Illustrations? Import a picture already cropped, resized and enhanced right into the text. Add a caption, if you want.

I love the new world of writing, most of the time. When the electricity goes out, when the computer crashes, then typewriters have an appeal.

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GKP Writing News

Class Picture Book

Presenting the Creating Picture Book class was challenging, but I’m glad it’s over. Except it isn’t really over yet. The class picture book isn’t done yet.

Getting Started

The class was supposed to last five weeks. However, no one came the first week. There were many reasons. Still, I was left loafing in the room enjoying the air conditioning, reading and working on the first Agate and Opal picture book.

Five people came the second week. There were seven, if you counted the two mothers. Three were young. Two were high school age and serious. We spent the time looking at picture books, discussing the range of illustrations and text.

Then the class decided on a topic for their book. We started a rough draft of pages.

Frustration

Any novel or picture book needs a plan. It’s possible to do a rough draft without one, but actually putting the work together requires some sense of what is happening. For a picture book, this is a story board.

That third week was supposed to complete the story board, but it didn’t happen. Without a plan, the class couldn’t do any prep work over the next week.

I spent the week trying to organize the ideas the class had into a storyboard. Luckily I knew two of the participants and saw them later on. We went over the plan I came up with, made a few changes.

Class Picture Book: Do Ducks Steal Hats?
The Creating Picture Book class picture book started as a cute idea and is turning into a cute book.

Disaster

Family emergencies happen. Still, this one took three people out of the class. The two remaining still wanted to do the class picture book, so everyone pitched in to draw the ducks, hats and people for the story.

The problem was time. Because there were so few of us, the class picture book was going to be mostly done on the computer. It takes a very, very long time to create 32 pages.

Our class picture book “Do Ducks Steal Hats?” (tentative title) will get done. It will take longer than the one week I had before the last class.

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GKP Writing News

Why My Books Are In the Library

Writing a book is hard work and takes lots of time. Publishing and advertising can cost a lot. Won’t putting a book in the library ruin sales?

“Missouri Biosphere” by Roy Shaw and Louise Harding

Although I rarely read dystopian novels, I would read this one. I know the authors. This is their first book. I read a book and post a review on Goodreads, something they want to happen.

But it won’t happen. I don’t purchase books now except rarely for research as I have too many books on my shelves and too little time to get them read and given away. My income is too limited to purchase a book solely to read it and give it away.

cover for "Edwina" by Karen GoatKeeper
This is one of the upper middle grade novels readers can find in my local library.

Other Readers

Lots of people don’t normally buy books, but love to read them. I see them checking out piles of books. They join groups and tell others about the books they like. This is free advertising.

Some of these people check out and read a book, then buy a copy. Often these are ones they will send off as gifts. More free advertising.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
Several people have read this book in my library, then purchased copies.

My Books

I depend on my library. Although I live out of town and must pay for my library card, I value it highly. It lets me use much better internet than is available at my house, read magazines without subscribing and wondering what to do about the pile of old ones, read books from over 50 libraries through a special consortium and write reviews for the newsletter and Goodreads.

My library gives so much to me, I want to give something back. When I publish a book, I make sure a copy goes in the library.

People check out and read my books. They buy copies to send to family and friends. Putting my books in the library is good for everyone.

When “Missouri Biosphere” appears in my library, I will be among the first to check it out.

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GKP Writing News

Preparing for Class

My Creating Picture Books class is now being advertised. I have flyers up. I left some at the local schools. The local paper carried a press release. The local radio station announced it. That leaves me preparing for class.

I procrastinated. There were no names on the sign up sheet. A feeling of relief vied with disappointment.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
This was the first picture book I finished. The text was written years before I found the courage to do the illustrations.

Someone Signed Up

The first person is signed up. That leaves the class has an event. I am now preparing for class for real.

Anticipation is now vying with an intense desire to cancel the class. Yes, I have completed three picture books, three illustrated books and illustrated activity books. Does this make me good enough to teach this class?

Changes in the Course

The original course has worksheets to hand out. I was going to charge for the course which would pay for running off these worksheets. That turned into too big a hassle so the course is free. The worksheets may have to be cancelled.

Perhaps the library meeting room is set up for a powerpoint presentation. I haven’t done one in twenty years, but can probably manage one? Hum. Are my nerves and insecurities moving in?

Once I finished the first picture book, I dared to do the illustrations for the other text sitting on my computer for years.

Tackling the Fears

Such fears seem to plague many writers. Books never get finished or languish unpublished because of them.

Teachers can get these fears too. I always dreaded the first day of school. All those new faces, names to learn, new lesson plans were so terrifying.

My Creating Picture Book course will happen. There will be people taking it. The fears may be there, but they need to be squelched.

Preparing for class will help. Either a powerpoint presentation or poster board presentation is needed. A list of picture books to look through on the first day needs assembling.

The course is ready. I have edited and rewritten it more than once. All I have to do is hold on and walk into the room on that first day.