This week, Story and I are heading down South, to visit with the family while my globe-trotting sister, Kate, is briefly in the country. We have been able to travel quite a bit since Story’s birth, and it is all due to my aunt, who works at American Airlines and lets us use her “non-rev”…
Knitting Ain’t What it Used to Be
I’ve been doing a lot of knitting lately. Right now I’m working on socks for Story, a blanket for me, mittens for my aunt, and a laceweight cardigan that I’m just going to go ahead and tell you right now will never, never be done. For those of you who don’t knit, you might be…
Mother’s Day Thoughts
Today is my first Mother’s Day as an official, bonafide mom. Â Naturally enough, I’ve spent a lot of the last year thinking about the kind of mom I want to be. Â And there’s really only one answer: Â one like my own. Of course, I didn’t always know how good I had it. Â Case in point:…
Paradigm Shift
It’s been a crazy few weeks for the Kalmes clan.  First, we moved to Seattle, real quick-like, a subject I hope to address in greater length in a future post.  Then, almost as soon as we were settled in a new apartment, Story and I took off again—this time to Texas for a dear friend’s…
Point, Counterpoint
When I first began The Indie Book Podcast, I thought of self-publishing was, you know, a neat thing. An interesting alternative path writers could take. I was excited that it was starting to be viable, but I wasn’t 100% sure it was something I was going to pursue. After all, I figured traditional publishing had…
To Hire or Not To Hire… An Editor
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m beginning to shepherd my completed mystery novel toward self-publication. I have amazing friends who are helping me out with this: one who’s doing the art, another who’s doing the proofreading, and yet more who have given me wonderful feedback while the book was in production. But one of the things…
Learning How The Other Half Lives
One of the unexpected results of doing The Indie Book Podcast is that I’ve started to get an inkling, however dim, of what it’s like to be an agent. I’m trying to find really good material to review on the podcast, which means I’m reading an awful lot of samples. This has been somewhat exacerbated…
Blog Resurrection
A little over a year ago, I retired this blog. It wasn’t exactly a conscious decision. For a couple of months, I kept thinking. “Oh, crap. I have got to get something up on that blog.” But it just never happened. Why? To make a long story short (and, I’m sure, annoyingly cryptic), that was…
Story Days
Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. I’ve been busy writing other things. I’ve been so busy, in fact, that it’s been over a week since the event I wanted to talk about here: my first monthy Story Days. Story Days were my idea for carrying forward the optimism and go-hung attitude I acquired at…
Too Many Ideas
This past weekend my sister was visiting here. I was deeply engrossed in The Hunger Games, and I remarked that one of the wonderful things about YA is that the writers have so much freedom with their premises. There is not a lot of justifying in YA, there are just wild ideas, thrilling stories, and…