How Authors Write~Elizabeth Varadan

Today I'm pleased to have Elizabeth Varadan here as part of my How Author's Write series. As a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, I'm super excited for Elizabeth's book birthday today for Imogene and the Case of the Missing Pearls. Congrats and Happy Book Birthday!!!

Welcome, Elizabeth. Please tell us a little about what you write? 

Thank you so much for having me here today, Mary. I write for both children and adults. For children, I’m drawn to the middle grades, and I write both fantasy and mysteries. For adults, I write mostly short stories and flash fiction.

Do you use 1st person, 3rd person, multiple POVs?
Most of my fiction is in 3rd person, close, although I’m rewriting a historical novel/ghost story that is in 1st person. It just seemed to call for that point of view.

How do you get started with a book? 
For me, it does vary. For Imogene and the Case of the Missing Pearls, it was the idea: What if a young girl became friends with Sherlock Holmes? What if she even helped him solve a case? [I can't wait to read this!!] For the historical novel with the ghost that I’m rewriting now, it was character. I actually dreamed the ending to the story and in my dream heard the voice of one of the characters and built the other characters around her.

Do you draft quickly, or are you more detailed in your draft?
I’m the epitome of the term “panster”, although I’m trying to be better about plotting things out in advance. I always have a general idea, and then I poke along from the start. I also revise a lot as I go, so that first draft can take a few weeks. The good news is that in my rewrites a lot has already been fleshed out. I still have to rewrite several times to get the story just right. [Your process sounds a lot like mine. I'm still trying to learn to do more plotting up front, in addition to the mental plotting I do. Maybe someday.]

Do you do research before your first draft, during?
I research both before and during, and sometimes even after, to go back and check certain details. [Sometimes it seems research is never done. Not that I mind. I actually like research :-)]

Do you outline?

I tried once to outline a story before sitting down to write it, and the story lost its zip for me. What works best for me is if I write out the general idea –main characters, problem or story kernel, ending I’m working toward – and then get that first draft out. And then I go through and outline what happened in each chapter, marking what I think are weak spots to be addressed before the re-write -- questions that need to be answered, conflicts in information, that sort of thing.

Do you name everything up front when you are drafting or do you leave comments for yourself to go back and fill in later so you don't lose the flow of what you are working on?
I have to have the characters’ names from the start. And then much of it is naming as I go. For me the “flow” doesn’t really work if I have blank spaces waiting to be filled. I have to fill them before I can go on.

Do you work with CP's or Beta's? If so, how soon into your draft do you let them see your work?
I belong to two really great writing groups. One group meets faithfully once a month, and we bring short work at any stage – no more than twelve pages -- to these meetings, both early drafts and rewrites. (It’s nice to see the progress in rewrites.) The second group meets more flexibly, around every six weeks or two months, and we bring more finished work to the meetings; often the whole book in a later draft, which is helpful in a different way. [These sound like great groups!]

What books/websites have you found most helpful to helping you write your best?
A really wonderful book is David Corbett’s The Art of Character. He has some exercises that are so evocative that just reading them makes characters come to life in my head, whether I actually do the exercise or not. Another book that I like to dip into for a mystery I’m writing, is Carolyn Wheat’s How to Write Killer Fiction. And one of my all time favorites is Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity. Online, I’ve enjoyed Chris Eboch’s blog, Write Like a Pro. She publishes all kinds of writing tips and has book suggestions, depending on what you like to read or write. And Nancy Hardy’s site, Fiction University, has great articles on aspects of writing that I find very helpful.

What do you know now that you wish you knew when you started writing?
How many times you’ll have to rewrite a manuscript to get it just right, and how many rejections you might have to deal with. (It’s also good to know that you might be happy those early drafts didn’t get published.)

What do you have out now, or coming out?
My middle grade mystery, set in Victorian London, Imogene and the Case of the Missing Pearls, released today from MX Publishing.

In Imogene and the Case of the Missing Pearls, a day after Imogene's obnoxious step-cousins pay a visit, her mother's pearls go missing. When Sherlock Holmes is called in, Imogene, harboring a secret desire to become a detective, sees her chance to learn from the great Mr. Holmes.








You can order your copy at Amazon or Book Depository 

Any upcoming events?
I will have two book signings in July:

-Hein Book Company, 204 Main Street, in Jackson, on Tuesday, July 7th at 6:00 p.m.,
-Swan’s Fine Books, 1381 Locust St. in San Francisco, on Saturday, July 11th, at 3:00 p.m.

A website we can find you and your books at?
You can find me at either of my blogs:
http://elizabethvaradansfourthwish.blogspot.com
or
http://victorianscribbles.blogspot.com

Additional links:
Twitter: @4thWishVaradan
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethVaradanAuthor
Amazon Author page: http://www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-Varadan/e/B003VOTCFG/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1308264854&sr=1-1


Thanks so much for visiting, Elizabeth!!!

How I Became a Writer: A Guest Post by Katie L. Carroll

I'm sitting here, writing and formatting this post in my half-cleaned office. I spent most of yesterday cleaning my office enough so my hubby could move his old desktop computer into this room. And, yes, I'm using said computer to work on this post. *happy dance* Don't get me wrong, I love my laptop and my tablet and the portability they offer me, but there are times it's just easier to do things on a desktop (like when designing images like the one above).

Today I have a special guest. Not only is she a fellow MuseItUp sister, but she's an amazing author, wonderful mom, and I'm thrilled to call her friend (even if we haven't met in person yet!). Please help me welcome Katie Carroll as she shares her writing journey with us.

How I Became a Writer
By Katie L. Carroll

I thought my life as a writer began when I was 19 on particularly hot day in early spring 2002, a black-letter day, the blackest of black-letter days in fact. I was in college on track to becoming a physical therapist with an early acceptance into the graduate program. But I didn’t become a physical therapist; I became a writer.

I’ve since come to realize, with the help of my mom, that it was much earlier than that that I began my writing life. On my blog post on the release day of the ebook version of Elixir Bound, she wrote, “Although you would have done fine as a physical therapist, I always knew it was not your calling. You were a writer ever since you could pick up a pencil and I think I always knew that, after all the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree (of course I’m talking about your dad).”

Well, my mom was mostly right. Even before I could pick up a pencil, my mom would read stories to us: the Little Golden Books, the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, all kinds of fiction. I think that’s when I became a writer.

When I stop to think about it, I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out I was a writer. The signs were all there. My family and I used to write and illustrate our own picture books about the adventures of Sam the Billy Goat. At the climax of the story it would always read, “Voop Whoosh! Up went the Billy Goat.” And he would fly up to save the day.

I wrote (and sometimes illustrated) stories my whole childhood. In middle school, high school, and college I worked on the school newspapers. Yeah, I think I had been in a state of denial for 19 years…which brings us back to that black-letter day…April 16, 2002. The day my sister Kylene died.

I don’t like to talk about that day. How the forget-me-nots were in bloom. How there was recording-breaking high temps. How it was the worst day of my life.

So what do you do when your 19 and your sister’s just died? Well, once you’re in a place where you can think again, you reevaluate. Everything.

For me that meant rethinking what I wanted to do with my professional life. Kylene gave me the permission to pursue my passion. So I began writing. Eventually I decided not to continue studying to be a physical therapist. I kept writing, often not even sure who I was writing for. Kylene, an audience, myself?

I pursued publication. And got rejections, along with some encouragement. I revised, learned a lot more about the business of publishing. Wrote some more. Revised some more. Got a lot more rejections…You get the picture.

Ten years and four months after Kylene died, my book was finally born into the world. And what was that book about? A young woman, entrusted with the future of her family’s secret healing Elixir, goes on a quest to find the Elixir’s secret ingredient.

I don’t need a psychoanalyst to tell me I was fulfilling a wish with that book. It was supposed to be about Kylene, and it is in some ways, but it’s really about me. Because for those 10 years, it had been too hard to write Ky’s book. I tried. Elixir Bound started out from her point of view, but I just couldn’t write that book yet.

But I am writing it now. Elixir Saved, a follow-up to Elixir Bound, will be Kylene’s book.

You see, I believe each of us as an individual doesn’t truly realize the impact we have on people. Each person we touch—whether it be with a story, a hug, a smile as we pass a stranger on the street—leaves a ripple.

Kylene, in her short life, left lots of ripples. With the people she loved. With the people she cared about. The people she felt compassion for, which was pretty much everyone. The people she shared the Harry Potter books with. Even the nurses in the hospital from the short time she was sick felt her ripples.

I like to think that each ripple I make with Elixir Bound is really Ky’s ripple…because I’m not sure I would have discovered my life’s passion if it weren’t for Kylene. It makes my heart smile to think that Kylene is still making ripples on the world, and that I have my own little role to play in that.

Katora Kase is next in line to take over as guardian to a secret and powerful healing Elixir. Now she must journey into the wilds of Faway Forest to find the ingredient that gives the Elixir its potency. Even though she has her sister and brother, an old family friend, and the handsome son of a mapmaker as companions, she feels alone. 

It is her decision alone whether or not to bind herself to the Elixir to serve and protect it until it chooses a new guardian. The forest hosts many dangers, including wicked beings that will stop at nothing to gain power, but the biggest danger Katora may face is whether or not to open up her heart to love.

Available at:

About the Author:

Katie L. Carroll is a mother, author, and editor. Her YA fantasy ELIXIR BOUND has been described as “The Lord of The Rings with a YA fiction twist.” She is also the author of a picture book app called THE BEDTIME KNIGHT. Her latest project is a collaborative, serialized middle grade mystery called THE GREAT CONNECTICUT CAPER, which is being released chapter-by-chapter starting in January 2015 and can be read at http://ctcaper.cthumanities.org/get-ready/. Katie worked as a puzzle magazine editor for Penny Publications for eight years before becoming a book editor for MuseItUp Publishing. For more about Katie, visit her website and blog at http://www.katielcarroll.com or follow her on Twitter @katielcarroll.