I’m so pleased to present Kate Lansing this week as our guest at The Debutante Ball. Kate is the author of the new Colorado Wine Mystery series, and she debuted with Killer Chardonnay in May. The second book in the series, A Pairing to Die For, is already available for preorder and launches in January 2021. Kate is a charming, generous person whom I met in an online group for…
Changes made during the editing of The Goddess Twins
I honestly feel like my editing process, while admittedly draining, was pretty positive. I never felt like my final editor hated the book, and I have heard some horror stories of writers who felt their editor was not honoring their book in the editing process! I am super grateful for my editing team at SparkPress and their confidence in my writing ability and in the strength of the story of…
My biggest blooper.
I was sailing along, finishing the last few edits to ARCHITECTS OF MEMORY’s sequel, when an e-mail came in from my amazing editor, informing me that ARCHITECTS’ cold reader had caught a medium-sized plothole during the second pass. That’s right. During the second pass. For those of you not familiar with the publishing process, by the time a book has reached the second pass, it should be nearly perfect. Production…
Big Mistakes. Big. Huge!
It’s blooper week! I feel like I’m a walking blunder most of the time, so I’m sure I could fill hundreds of blog posts with examples of “most embarrassing moments.” Since no one wants to read that, I’ll pick the category in which I’m most likely to screw up: copy editing. Copy editing comes very near the end of the publishing process. It’s when someone who is brilliant and generous…
Blooper Reel: Is it “Duke”? “The Duke”? or “Sir Duke”?
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, composer, pianist, and jazz orchestra leader, plays a pivotal role in the life of Omar Bassari, one of my main characters in The Talking Drum. Omar is a drummer growing up in a small village in Senegal. He’s been training to become a master drummer under his father Ibrahim’s direction. One day, in the mid-1960s, Ibrahim pulls him aside to tell him of an important event…
Interview (and Book Giveaway) with Nicole Mabry, author of Past This Point
It is my pleasure to welcome Nicole Mabry to the Debutante Ball today! Nicole and I have met virtually through our Debut Authors of Color group. PAST THIS POINT, an apocalyptic women’s fiction thriller, tells the story of one woman and her dog fighting to survive during a deadly virus outbreak that renders New York City a ghost town. About Nicole Nicole Mabry grew up in Northern California but has lived in…
Cutting Room Floor for The Goddess Twins
There is quite a bit that was shed from the original manuscript of The Goddess Twins to what has resulted in the published version that’s available today. When I was writing this story, I worked off of an outline, and even from the outline there are things that shifted and changed. I have found that the writing process can be like finding your way through a labyrinth. I am grateful…
I deleted so many scenes… pretty much an entire book of them.
Back in 2016, Architects of Memory had a different title, a different premise, and a far different execution than the version that landed with Tor. The planet Tribulation was only supposed to be the first stop on what was intended to be a galaxy-spanning adventure. In the second chapter, ship’s doctor Reva Sharma mentions that the crew should go to Europa Station to deliver the weapon to Auroran R&D. In…
All (well, some) of the Cuts from Kathleen’s Debut
We’re talking about deleted scenes this week, and there were so many iterations of Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes that I don’t know where to start. Here are a few of the major and minor cuts I made during the four years I worked on the novel: A very minor character named Erin Warner used to be a POV character. In fact, the chapters that are now Tracy’s were originally…
A Deleted Scene from The Talking Drum
I deleted so many scenes from The Talking Drum over the years in which I was revising it that I had a hard time choosing which one to feature in this blog. I finally settled on a scene in which my character Sydney, who co-owns The Talking Drum Bookstore and Cultural Center with her husband, is desperate to unload a set of encyclopedias her husband purchased. She doesn’t think anyone…
