Category: Writing

Writing

What is Your Novel’s Sex?

Kara Jorgensen4 Comments

I’m not sure many people think about the gender of their book while they are writing it, but when I began The Earl of Brass as an undergraduate, it crossed my mind.  While reading other steampunk novels, I was rather surprised by how the books seemed to either be very masculine (G.D. Falksen’s Blood in the Skies) or very feminine (Gail Carriger’s Soulless).  I wanted to write a book that was androgynous, that had no defining gender for itself or its audience.

As part of my research for writing The Earl of Brass, I read through Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World as well as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland in order to better understand Victorian and Edwardian adventure novels. There again, I found the gender gap.  In Conan Doyle’s novel, the men leave their women at home and go on an adventure full of dinosaurs and savages, and while Gilman infused her work with feminist ideals, it was very much an us-versus-them mentality with a muddled ending where the women and men fall in love and go back to America. Continue reading “What is Your Novel’s Sex?” →

Personal Life · Writing

You Are What You Read

Kara Jorgensen7 Comments

tbr pile oct 30What do your reading choices say about you?  Since beginning graduate school, I have been turning this question over in my mind as I listened to others in my classes mention who their favorite authors are.  Most of them are people I have never heard of or read but are rather famous in the contemporary lit world.  Typically, I hold my tongue and don’t mention what I read for fear of being ridiculed or looked down upon.  This led to a greater question: why do people read certain books?

Do people (especially those in academia) read for fun or do they read certain books because they feel it is expected of them?  As I continue my journey through the MFA in Creative Writing program, I find myself wondering what my professors read, especially when they are writers or poets as well.  What we read automatically becomes ingrained in our beings and eventually comes out in our writing. I can attest to the fact that when I read a book I love, I am inspired to write and often I will lean toward that genre or some theme found in that work.  If I read a book I had to drag myself through, it typically slows my writing to a crawl.  Oddly, while I didn’t love reading Virginia Woolf for the most part, her works had a huge influence in the way I deal with close narration and “head hopping” as others call it. Continue reading “You Are What You Read” →

Writing

Cover Reveal for The Winter Garden: Book Two of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices

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Real-Winter-Garden-Cover-Final-front

Well, my second novel finally has a cover! I am beyond excited to present the cover for The Winter Garden: Book Two of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices. The illustrious Javier Ruiz has created a lovely cover for the second time in the style of a paper theatre.  The book is slated to be out in early 2015, but it already has a Goodreads page found here.  The synopsis is as follows: Continue reading “Cover Reveal for The Winter Garden: Book Two of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices” →

Writing

Character Preview: Immanuel Winter

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im close up(Artist credit for this pic of Immanuel Winter goes to the lovely Fiammetta de Innocentis)

I put up a poll on my Facebook page asking the fans of my work what they would like to see next as a preview of The Winter Garden.  Only a few people answered (I’m not that popular and Facebook hides my posts), but it was unanimous that they wanted to see a character preview.  What I am going to reveal here will contain no spoilers and only contains information from before the events of The Winter Garden.  Down the line, I may release a few more of these along the way, but may I present to you, the leading man of The Winter Garden, Immanuel Winter.

Immanuel Winter was born February 2nd, 1870 in Berlin, Germany.  His family line can be traced back to the alchemists of Cologne, but during the time of the French Republic, his family migrated to Berlin.  This change of cities officially shifted their already changing identity from alchemists to scientists, but one remnant of their esoteric past remained in the form of a pendant: Continue reading “Character Preview: Immanuel Winter” →

Writing

Free eBook!

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cropped-banner.png

I just thought I would let everyone know that The Earl of Brass will be free on Thursday, September 18th and Friday, September 19th!  The book has rather good ratings on Goodreads and Amazon.  The blurb is as follows:

When Eilian Sorrell, a promising archaeologist and the eldest son of the Earl of Dorset, loses his arm in a dirigible crash, he fears he will face a bleak future among London’s aristocracy. On a quest for normalcy, Lord Sorrell commissions a prosthetic arm but finds the craftsman is not what he seems.
After the death of her brother, Hadley Fenice takes over his prosthesis business but knows it will be an uphill battle as women are discouraged from doing man’s work. In return for building Lord Sorrell an automaton arm, he offers her a chance at freedom by following him to the Negev Desert under the guise of a man.
But what lies beneath the desert is more precious than potshards or bones. As they venture deeper, they discover a society where the path of life is not governed by gain but by passion. When imperialistic invaders come in search of a new colony to pillage, Eilian and Hadley are forced to defend their fleeting glimpse of paradise.

Please check it out and tell your friends!

Writing

The Importance of Being an Earnest Reviewer

Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

five stars

Ah, book reviews.  The all too important yet dreaded rituals all authors dread.  Will they love it?  Will they hate it?  Will the reviewer absolute eviscerate me for seemingly no reason?

The thought of reviews for any author can be daunting, but to an indie author, reviews are one of the most important aspects of marketing our writing.  Currently, I am an unknown, a bit of krill in a ocean of whales and sharks.  Reviews are what often convince readers to take a chance on a newbie author, especially if they are more in depth than “OMG! IT WAS THE BEST BOOK EVER!”  Yes, I can convince my mom and ten of my friends to write puffy five star reviews, but does that do anything for me and what does that say about me as a writer? Continue reading “The Importance of Being an Earnest Reviewer” →

Writing

The Winter Garden: Book Two of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices

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first line

The Winter Garden: Book Two of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices is only chapters away from completion (apart from editing), so I decided it was time to post the blurb and hopefully build up some hype.  Here is it:

Emmeline Jardine and Immanuel Winter are only months away from achieving their dreams, she will enter debutant society and he will receive a degree from Oxford, but a day at the Thames transforms their lives forever, intertwining their souls and putting them into the path of a predator.

Ripped from the comfort of the world they know, Emmeline and Immanuel are thrust into a struggle for their survival. Even though they escape, Immanuel is forever altered by his time in captivity. Gradually he begins to settle into a normal life as the coroner’s assistant until he comes face to face with the man who nearly destroyed him.

Unaware of what he is capable of, Emmeline is infatuated with the dashing madman and follows him deeper into a world of corrupt mediums. When a murderer masquerading as a monster begins to hunt beautiful Spiritualists, Immanuel knows the key to stopping him lies within the girl who shares his soul.

Continue reading “The Winter Garden: Book Two of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices” →

Writing

Straddling the Genre Line

Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

litvgenrThe phrases “genre fiction” and “literary fiction” strike fear into my heart.  There’s a constant tug and pull in the literary world between what is of the higher art and what is considered beneath the establishment.  What should be valued more? Entertainment and enjoyment or the more “artistic”, philosophical, cerebral side of literature. Being a graduate student studying creative writing, I cringe when people ask what I write.  I am already anticipating the raised eyebrows and disapproving looks when I say, “Well, it’s technically science fiction or historical fiction.”  Instantly, it is discounted as trope-laden, cliche genre fiction. Continue reading “Straddling the Genre Line” →

Personal Life · Writing

The Long-Term Goals of a Young Writer

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Today I am heading back to graduate school to begin another semester studying creative writing.  Every time I start school anew, I feel my anxiety level rise tremendously as I worry my professors will not like me or my work, and the best way I have found for me to combat this is to look at the larger picture.  This year I achieved one of my major life goals, to publish a novel, and for this year and the beginning of next year, I would like to publish the second book in the Ingenious Mechanical Devices series, The Winter Garden.  I’m 73,000 words into it, so I hope to be done in a month or two since my writing slows down exponentially once the semester starts.  Editing hopefully won’t take too long, so it is supposed to be out some time in March or so. Along with finishing book two, I plan on getting book three underway or working on my master’s thesis project (which is a novel also but not in the Ingenious Mechanical Devices series though it is still laced with fantasy). Maybe even both. I haven’t tried to tackle juggling two projects at once in a while, but hopefully, I’ll manage. Continue reading “The Long-Term Goals of a Young Writer” →

Writing

The Writing Process

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One of the members of my Facebook author page asked if I would do a post about my writing process.  After I saw it, I sat back and scratched my head.  What was my writing process?  Like many things, when you live with it, it isn’t nearly as obvious as it is to others.

 

As with all writing, it begins with an idea.  Sometimes it comes as a smattering of dialogue or description while other times it comes as a topic or idea.  For The Earl of Brass, it began with the idea of a man needing automaton parts in order to survive, but this rapidly evolved into a man with a missing arm who needs a prosthesis.  In the beginning, I typically free write and put down anything that comes to mind.  Sometimes it becomes the first chapter of a novel while other times it gets completely rewritten or discarded.  Once an idea beginnings to take form, I make an idea map or an outline of what events will happen in the coming paragraphs.  For flexibility’s sake, I usually only plan five or so chapters ahead at any given time.  Typically, my characters are wayward and do what they want, so I need to alter my plans to fit them.  Forcing an agenda on my characters never goes well.  Sometimes when I have ideas but am not sure what order they should be in, I make index cards and lay them out.  I will move them around and ask my best friend/beta reader and see what she thinks to ensure it’s logical to others. Continue reading “The Writing Process” →