Category: GKP Writing News

Upper Middle Grade Writing

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date February 13, 2024

When I wrote “Old Promises”, I was writing for an upper middle grade reader. Over several years I found writing upper middle grade novels and science books was what I was comfortable with.

cover of "Old Promises" Hazel Whitmore #2 by Karen GoatKeeper

What Is Upper Middle Grade?

In school years this would be sixth to eighth grades. In age this covers ten to fourteen.

The main characters are in that age range. The plots are more complicated than in children’s novels, but not as adult as young adult is.

This was why I enjoyed writing upper middle grade novels. Although I touched on young adult themes, it was not edgy or specific or filled with teenage angst. These things didn’t interest me then or now.

Writing Series

“Old Promises” was the second novel about Hazel Whitmore. As I wrote it, I considered writing a series. All the possibilities are there.

Hazel is the namesake of another Hazel in the past. I based this on an old photograph of a lovely woman I know nothing about. Who was this woman?

Who is this woman? I don’t know. Someone probably died and this picture was hauled to the dump and thrown away. I remember my mother spending months identifying people and places in her mother’s pictures after my Grandmother died. They were our history, where our family came from. Something so many young and not so young people don’t seem to care about any more. That is a shame. We kept this picture as she looks like such a nice person, someone we would want to know. When I wrote “Old Promises”, she became the model for Hazel’s Great Aunt Hazel for whom she was named.

Crooked Creek lends itself to several ideas as well. Although the name is probably for a nearby creek that meanders, it could pertain to some less than honest inhabitants.

Then there is Hanging Rock. One interpretation is the bluff overhanging the creek at the edge of the school yard. Another hints at an unsavory past.

And there is Linda. But she is more part of the end of the trilogy than this second novel.

Series Problems

The biggest drawback to writing a series for me is being locked into a certain cast of characters, a certain place, a particular genre. Plots must revolve around these. Extensive notes must be kept so character names stay the same, setting names stay the same, plots don’t repeat.

I’m not that organized. There is one further consideration.

Writing upper middle grade novels is not where I want to be now. A number of things have changed in my life over the last few years. These have changed the focus of my writing as well.

Will I revisit Hazel? I don’t know. At present I am immersed in Life’s Rules and The Carduan Chronicles and plan to stay there for now.

Tags Hazel Whitmore trilogy, writing novels

GKP Writing News

Writing “Old Promises”

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date February 2, 2024

When I wrote “Broken Promises”, I intended to move Hazel Whitmore from the city to the country. It took an entire book to accomplish this. So I ended up writing “Old Promises”.

The Setting

Although I’ve seen every contiguous state and lived in several of them, I’ve lived in the rural Missouri Ozarks for thirty years. Following the dictum ‘write what you know’, I moved Hazel to the Missouri Ozarks. This covers a lot of territory.

Crooked Creek is a fictitious town modeled on two or three towns I’ve lived near. The residents are drawn from people I’ve known in these towns, although only one is true to the person.

The land Hazel moves to is modeled after a place we looked at when we moved here. It wasn’t suitable for our life style, but works well for Hazel’s.

My imagination dreamed up the house. I’ve been in buildings filled with dust and dirt along with cobwebs. These were a bit exaggerated for the novel.

The setting was essential for writing “Old Promises”, even needing a bit of a map.

City to Country

There are so many adjustments for someone moving from the city, if they want to be part of the country life for real. Some of them are a big shock.

For me, seeing the horizon was amazing as smog hid it near Los Angeles. And my father’s place was flooded in three days after I got there, something I’d only seen on TV.

Hazel’s world is a bit different. Her new house is hidden behind a hill so there is no cell service. Internet service is slow once her mother can afford to have it put in. Town is miles away.

Hazel’s school is a small kindergarten to eighth grade. The students have known each other all their lives. She is not only new, but a stranger, a foreigner and resented by relatives she has never met or known of before.

Sink or Swim

Although the plot revolves around an old family feud, the real story is Hazel trying to understand and adjust to a way of life undreamed of by those living in cities. In some ways, that way of life will never be understood by the city transplant. That is something I understand even after thirty years living in the Ozarks and helped me in writing “Old Promises”.

Tags "Old Promises" by Karen GoatKeeper, creating novel settings

GKP Writing News

Breaking New Ground

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date January 26, 2024

There are times when writing what you know about just isn’t enough. When that happens, an author is left breaking new ground.

Unfortunately, research is never as good as experience. That lack of experience often shows up to anyone who has that experience.

Being Outdated

I grew up near Los Angeles learning to drive on the freeways and across the city. Yet, I would not try to write about the modern experience because what I remember is not what exists now.

That came home to me the last time I visited people and places in my home town. I had only been gone ten years, yet I almost needed a map to find the old neighborhood. The houses were still there, some remodeled, but the people weren’t. It was not home.

The same problem is coming up in Life’s Rules. Part of the action is based on things I remember from long ago. Except those things have changed a lot. That leaves me breaking new ground as I reach out to people to see how my memories and the new realities mesh.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper — These are Nubian dairy goats. They have long legs, Roman noses and long, pendulous ears. Boers have long ears too, but not the same and they are shorter and stouter. Other dairy goat breeds have upright ears or, in the case of LaManchas, very short ears. Their body shapes differ as well. Someone unfamiliar with goats will not know these differences and will probably not find them by doing research.

Research Isn’t Enough

When I was working on “For Love of Goats”, I knew every story needed an illustration. I also knew finding an illustrator was not going to be easy, not because there aren’t lots of good illustrators out there, but because few of those illustrators knew about goats.

Serious goat owners usually cringe at the “Billy Goats Gruff” caricatures. This is what many people think goats are like. They aren’t.

There are hundreds of goat breeds around the world as I found out doing research for “Goat Games”. Every breed is different both in looks and personality. So I did my own illustrations to make sure Alpines and Saanens have the correct ears, Nigerian Dwarfs have the correct stature. Nubians look friendly and beautiful (Yes, I’m biased.)

Don’t think this breaking new ground research doesn’t affect writing. We read a big name coffee table book on John Deere tractors. The author had obviously never owned or driven such a tractor.

We are very familiar with the local milkweeds. Some of the books we’ve read about them have obvious errors in them due to the authors knowing only what they looked up.

cover for "Goat Games" by Karen GoatKeeper — I visited many goat owners as I wrote this book. In talking with them, I found out a lot about how different breeds differ which is why an owner prefers one breed over another.

Breaking New Ground

There are many times experience isn’t enough. But research can only take an author wo far. Not realizing its limitations can really hurt a manuscript.

Tags novel researching, writing novels

GKP Writing News

Write What They Know

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date January 19, 2024

I’m a city girl moved to the country. Anne of Green Gables is a favorite series. Perhaps that is one reason this type of plot interested me. After all, writers are encouraged to write what they know.

That’s a good idea as far as it goes. Few of us have led such adventurous lives to really live up to this. In fact, although I grew up outside Los Angeles, “Broken Promises” is set in New York City, a place I have visited twice.

Gaining Experiences

My depictions of New York City are limited in the novel because I did want to follow the write what they know admonition. My last visit to the Big Apple was a two week stay. During that time I explored Central Park, a way to stay sane surrounded by so many buildings and people. Times Square, Broadway, Coney Island, Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History got stuffed into that two weeks.

At the time, my novel was not even an idea. Writing was not on my agenda. I was on vacation, the first one I’d had in many years. Although I was not aware of it, I was storing up all those memories so I could draw on them years later.

cover for "Broken Promises" by Karen GoatKeeper — One advantage of being older is having a big storehouse of memories to draw on when I am writing. An important attitude is seeing every task, person, place and happening, no matter how mundane or boring, as a learning experience.

Mining Memories

Many writers keep journals. I don’t. I have pictures and each picture tells me a story of a place, a time, a reaction.

Every place I go, every job I hold, every person I meet is a chance to learn something new. As I write, my memory reminds me of similar places and people from my past.

Different experiences bring back emotions as well as situations. Hazel loses her father in the novel. My family lost my nephew. My father had died leaving behind a letter, a letter from the dead.

It’s possible to look places up, even take virtual tours now. People write about lots of things on the internet, even as I am doing now. But these are second hand.

Write What They Know.

To truly write about something, it helps to have actually seen and felt it in reality. At least experience something similar. That’s when words stop being just words and create a fictional reality.

Tags making novels come to life, novel writing, writing from experience

GKP Writing News

Writing That First Novel

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date January 5, 2024

Before I found National Novel Writing Month (NaN0), my books were more exercises in writing about goats and nature. Writing that first novel was not even an idea. Fiction was something I read, not wrote.

However, I’d finished “Goat Games” and “Exploring the Ozark Hills” and wanted a new writing project. I liked writing and wanted to do more of it.

False Starts

The NaNo challenge was to write 50,000 words in 3o days. That’s almost 2,000 words a day, a mind boggling number to me then. But I like challenges.

The problem was not having an idea for writing that first novel. Somehow I came up with one.

Disaster Looming

That plot idea was not workable. It was a disaster waiting for me to fall into it. I did just that.

There was no novel draft that November. However, I was hooked. That novel was left moldering on my computer as I came up with a new idea.

It was trite. City girl moves to the country. Done and done well so many times, the idea was a waste of time.

Marine Private First Class Brandon Smith

Everything changed with a phone call from my mother. My nephew, my brother’s only child, had been killed in Iraq.

Brandon was 19. He joined the Marines because he was looking for a way to get his life on track. His love was working on engines and he was supposed to do that. Except he was sent to Iraq.

Grief has so many forms. It’s different for every person. Perhaps that is why it shows up in so many novels.

“Broken Promises”

My brother didn’t really accept Brandon’s death for a year. For my mother, it was devastating. He was the only grandchild she really had time with and he was killed on her eightieth birthday.

City girl moves to the country. Now Hazel had a reason to move. She had a conflict to resolve.

And I found writing that first novel that some novels write themselves even as they tear you apart inside.

Tags "Broken Promises" by Karen GoatKeeper, dealing with grief, novel writing

GKP Writing News

Ocean Exploration Book Reviews

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date December 29, 2023

Somehow I ended up this year circumnavigating the world with Captain James Cook and Lieutenant Charles Wilkes. These two men makes today’s ocean exploration so easy.

Modern Ocean Mapping

Scientists today have satellites, sonar, air craft, radio communication, reinforced steel ships with engines. Ocean charts give accurate information about continents, islands, currents, undersea mounts and more.

These don’t change that time spent out on the ocean is time away from friends and family. A ship is its own world and those on it are stuck in each other’s company for the time of the voyage.

Ocean Voyages for Wilkes and Cook

“Stowaway” by Karen Hesse is set during Captain Cook’s first voyage around the world in 1769. “The Forgotten Voyage of Charles Wilkes” by begins in 1838.

These voyages were made in wooden sailing ships. Their movements depended on the wind or, in emergency, on small boats pulling them as men rowed. Storms blew them off course, shredded sails and sometimes onto reefs or rocks.

Without radios, each ship had to depend on their crew and captain. If the ship was sunk, the crew went down with it. Their families waited, not knowing, for years until the ship was given up as lost.

Provisions were what a ship could carry. When possible, the crew fished. Whenever land was seen, the ship could try to refill empty water casks and gather fresh food.

Medicine was iffy. Scurvy was dreaded and showed up frequently. Recognition of using citrus juice was still experimental.

Exploration and Politics

Captain Cook was important to Britain. His voyages of ocean exploration were supported and valued. Scientific knowledge was important in Europe.

President John Quincy Adams wanted to send out a fleet of ships for ocean exploration to make the new United States important in the scientific community. Congress ignored him and those who followed him.

When Congress finally approved funding for a voyage, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes was put in charge with a promise of having a promotion to Captain. It didn’t happen. His ships were old and inadequate for the task.

The Naval Ship Yard pretended to repair the ships. Their work was shoddy, holes in masts were stuffed with rope and painted over, rotting wood and equipment were not replaced.

In spite of inadequate winter clothing (the manufacturer cheated on the material) and barely seaworthy ships, Wilkes showed Antarctica to be a continent, mapped islands and harbors, spread American diplomacy around the southern part of the world. His reward when he returned was a court martial. His work was ignored and Europe was allowed to insult it.

Book Ratings

Both of these books were easy to read. “Stowaway” was written in a journal entry format that took a bit to get used to. In the Goodreads system, both received four stars and full reviews.

Tags Captain James Cook, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, ocean voyages

GKP Writing News

Annual Writing Plans

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date December 22, 2023

I should know better than to compile a list of annual writing plans. The list is always too long, too ambitious and begging for trouble.

Over the years I keep making out my plans. And just as surely life gets in the way. At the end of the year I look over my annual writing plans to see if any of them have actually gotten done.

This year I have completed some of my plans. One novel (“Hopes, Dreams and Reality”) and a picture book (“The Little Spider”) did get done. And there was a bonus picture book (“At the Laundromat”).

My covers are a usually a blend of digital and watercolor. For the Hopes, Dreams and Reality cover, I painted the figure then scanned it into the computer. Then I added the background color and printing. Sometimes I do these with watercolor, but opted for the digital with this cover. And, yes, I corrected a few problems with the watercolor.

What about next year?

Novels

With a draft nearing completion for Life’s Rules, I must have it on my list. It still needs a lot of research leading to a rewrite.

Then there is “The Carduan Chronicles: Arrival” to complete. This does have drafts to finish merging. Before that the timeline must be rewritten. I find the size of this is daunting (terrifying?).

Picture Books

Each picture book takes a long time. The text takes thought as it is so short. Each image must not only illustrate the text, but expand on it.

Once the drawings and text are done, I can sit down and enjoy doing the watercolor. These often have lots of little mistakes in them as I am not an artist, strictly an amateur trying my best. So each watercolor must then be scanned into the computer and turned into a final image.

There are several ideas I’m working out. One is a little girl wandering off onto the hills while her family searches for her. This sounds scary, but won’t be. It will be more of a nature adventure story.

Opal and Agate: Partners in Adventure is a goat series. I have lots of ideas for these two kids. These will not be humanized goat kids, but goat kids. And, as a long time goat owner, I know how much adventure and trouble goat kids can get into.

My new Nubian doe High Reaches Drucilla’s Opal looks innocent. All she wants is to be petted and fed. That is, until she finds some adventure to try out.

Nonfiction

I will work on the Dent County Flora. It won’t get done as there are so many plants to find and get pictures of. My goal is to complete another two hundred plants this year.

There are other essay ideas, but these are more writing exercises taking hazy shape in the imagination for now

Part 1: Metrics is available for “The Chemistry Project”. Part 2a: Matter awaits the final story. It takes time to get help from other people.

The Chemistry Project has several units close to done. Unfortunately, the pages needed depend on other people for information and pictures. Coordinating schedules can be daunting.

Annual Writing Plans

As you can see, I’ve far too many goals for the year. How many will I accomplish? I don’t know. But the fun is in trying to get as many as possible done.

Tags future GoatKeeper books

GKP Writing News

End of Year Book Race

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date December 15, 2023

Each January I set a reading goal on Goodreads. For several years that goal has been seventy books. There is always temptation to increase it, but the December end of year book race squelches it.

The goal was seventy books again this year. I have been running a book or two ahead of the number Goodreads thinks will meet that goal all year. However, I still have three books to do and two weeks left in the year.

Is This Doable?

Of course the goal is doable. I set the goal to be obtainable. It’s a good feeling to actually accomplish one goal for the year.

At present I’m reading two books, “Sixteen Tons” and “The Cat Who Said Cheese”. Both have fewer than a hundred pages left to read in them.

Two more books are waiting. “The Christmas Pony” seems made to order for a horse crazy person like me. And a new book at the library is “Octopus, Seahorse Jellyfish”, appealing as I grew up near the ocean and studied it in University.

Desperate Measures

Life happens. Last year turned into an end of year book race that seemed unwinnable.

Then I turn to picture books. Now, I do read these all year, but rarely list them on Goodreads.

Picture books are very short and that messes up my average page count on Goodreads. And I rarely check these books out. Instead I stand in the children’s section to read one or two before heading off to do errands. There are several on my book shelf at home for when I want to relax or destress.

Next Year?

Even though this December doesn’t seem to be turning into a frantic end of year book race, I will leave my goal at seventy books next January. It’s a comfortable goal and it’s nice to have something a little challenging, but not out of reach.

Tags reading goals

GKP Writing News

Social Media Headache

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date December 8, 2023

My internet time is very limited and I’m not interested in joining the social media sites except for Pinterest. Unfortunately I now have a social media headache.

Life’s Rules Plotline

Stephanie Taylor, the main character, is estranged from her children. She would like to reconnect, but doesn’t know how.

Somehow I ended up with her finding their Facebook pages to find out more about her children’s lives and her grandchildren, the ones she’s only seen at Christmas for years. This is plausible as far as I know. I’ve heard many people say they keep up with their families through Facebook.

However, I am not on Facebook and do not wish to join. This is the basis of my social media headache.

Research

I vaguely remember I could visit Facebook pages, just look at them, by typing in the address or doing a search for the person. This works for the library Facebook page. It worked for a cousin with a business.

The big difficulty is the time it takes to blunder along trying to do this. The next step seems to be to ask someone with a Facebook page more about it.

That leaves me back with my social media headache. Whom do I know who would be willing to do this?

In the Meantime

After November, I tend to goof off for a week or two. I opened up my ebook revision for the Pumpkin Project.

cover of "The Pumpkin Project" by Karen GoatKeeper — This was one of my first books. I now have trouble finding where all the pictures, puzzles and other images are. Record keeping is very important in writing not only for writing a novel, but for writing a series or for doing later rewrites.

This takes me to a different set of headaches. The print file is huge, over 96 MB. It needs to come down to under 25 MB.

So far my line of attack is to resize all photographs, some of which are very difficult to find after many years. I’m also removing page breaks, page numbers, tabs, section breaks and extra spaces.

It is working a little. I’m down 10 MB. There are still 140 pages to go to keep me occupied while I solve my social media headache so I can complete Life’s Rules.

Tags doing novel research, writing novels

GKP Writing News

Finishing NaNo

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date December 1, 2023

Life’s Rules is not done. Yes, finishing NaNo did happen, but not with a completed draft. Difficulties arose.

The Idea

Before November, I made out a bullet list of the major scenes I expected to occur in my nove Life’s Rules. And the first fifteen thousand words went according to plan.

Then the novel took a sharp turn. The bullet list became obsolete. Even though the novel still moved in the same general direction, the route had changed.

Hated Timelines

This novel draft was supposed to move from beginning to end with little deviation. Finishing NaNo with a rough draft seemed a sure thing.

Instead I ended up with a different novel, one requiring a timeline. And I didn’t have one. I blundered on for thousands of words until the novel began to look like a disaster happening in slow motion.

Solution

There were three possibilities. One was to abandon the whole thing, write something else. That wasn’t what I wanted to do.

A second was to continue with the disaster I was working on. The ending draft might be over the fifty thousand words, but it would be a mess requiring months of work and rewrite to straighten out.

This alternative was not attractive. I don’t mind doing rewrites. I do mind doing unnecessary rewrites. And this would be one.

That left the third alternative. I started back at the beginning and did a rewrite of the twenty-three thousand words I’d completed.

This time I put in the timeline. It meant adding some new material and deleting other scenes. Some got altered to fit into the timeline.

The Result

I ended up finishing NaNo with half a draft. It isn’t completely right. It needs another thirty or forty thousand more words to finish the draft. This can be done in December.

Perhaps I did break an unwritten rule of NaNo of not editing. However, I ended up with half a draft of workable prose.

Tags editing novels, National Novel Writing Month, rewriting novels