Welcome to the website of Mindy Klasky, author of fifteen novels (including Fright Court, the As You Wish Series, the Glasswrights Series, Harlequin Special Editions, the Jane Madison Series, and Season of Sacrifice.)

Look around, read some blog posts, and click on other pages for more information about Mindy, her writing career and her editorial services.  If you would like to receive Mindy’s free quarterly electronic newsletter, sign up in the lower left corner of this page.

Thanks for coming by — and don’t hesitate to join in the conversation below!

So, on another board I frequent, the author-host asked what folks were making, and the answers ranged across the arts (from writing to choir-ing to handicrafts, etc.)  I was amused (and impressed!) by the answers.

Me, I’m writing the final three chapters of DARKBEAST REBELLION, well in advance of its due date (so that I can set it aside for a few weeks and come back to it with fresh eyes.)

And I’m knitting a medium-grey mid-calf ribbed skirt (new skill learned:  ripping out long rows of stitches and still getting things back onto the needles; skills to be learned:  blocking!  and seaming!)

So, what are *you* making?

Mindy, wanting to add more things to her list of projects

Well, the title of this post says it all…

In the relatively near future, I’m going to be writing a novella.  (Fans of the Jane Madison series and the Fright Court series – this is your chance to cheer!)  But that means that I need to read some novellas, especially ones published in the last few years.  Especially ones in the romance genre.  With an emphasis on contemporary stories.  Extra points if they’re funny.

Anyone got recommendations?

(And yes, published authors.  Feel free to suggest your own work here!)

Mindy, building a list, checking it twice…

When I was much in middle school and high school, I would become obsessed with a topic, then read everything I could find on it.  Sometimes, the “topic” was a particular author — the first of those that I remember is Ruth M. Arthur, closely followed by Zilpha Keatley Snyder and E.L. Konigsburg.  Sometimes, the “topic” was a subject matter.  In ninth grade, for example, I was absolutely consumed by a passion for Leonardo da Vinci, which expanded into a study of Michelangelo.

These days, I rarely have the time to complete such obsessive reading.  The books on my to-be-read shelf are an odd collection of gifts, recommendations from friends and family, volumes picked up at conventions, books written by friends, resources for potential future novels, etc.  All too often, I complete a book that I loved, and I don’t have the time to go on to other books in that series, by that author, whatever.

Therefore, I’m a little bemused by the prominence of Ancient Rome in my reading of late.  This all started, of course, with the trip that we took to Rome last October.  While there, I read Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of An Empire by Simon Baker, which gave me a good overview of eight major leaders of Rome, the politics surrounding their times, etc.  To contrast with the non-fiction, I also read Stephanie Dray’s Lily of the Nile, which tells the story of Cleopatra Selene, the daughter of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, who was brought to Rome as a prisoner of war.

And I loved Lily enough that I jumped immediately into its sequel, Song of the Nile.  And I read a YA book, also about Cleopatra Selene, Cleopatra’s Moon, by Vicky Alvear Schecter (and what a difference there is between Dray’s books and Schechter’s — starting with the same basic historic figures, they go in very different directions!)  To top it off, we’ve been watching the HBO mini-series, Rome.

I feel almost like I’ve returned to the reading patterns of my childhood ::wry grin::

So?  How about you?  Do you read obsessively about one time period or place or theme or author, then head on to another?  Or do you sip and sample, moving on from one thing to the next to maximize your reading exposure?

Mindy, wanting more time to read, always

Remember when you were a kid, and you ran out to the mailbox to see if you’d received a letter?  Did you beg to open anything handwritten that was addressed to ___ Family?

When I was thirteen years old, I moved to a new city.  I left behind people who had been my classmates for seven years, people whom I thought were my Best.  Friends.  Ever.  (One of them was my very first writing partner.  Another was the type of friend where you spend three or four days at her house over summer vacation, then immediately have her come over and spend three or four days at your house.  You get the idea.)

I loved getting mail after we moved.

And I love getting mail today.  Except – sigh – the vast majority of the mail in my mailbox is junk.  Catalogs.  Advertisements.  The handful of bills that I can’t make electronic.  Prospectuses on investments.

Junk.

Well, the holiday season is different.  I get cards then.  Generally, I send cards then.  But this year, I was overwhelmed by the holidays, and I didn’t get my life coordinated enough to send cards.

And then along comes Mary Robinette Kowal, with a proposal to make February a Month of Letters.  You can read her idea here:

http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/month-of-letters/

It’s pretty simple.  Send a letter every day in February that the postal service operates.  (Not on Sundays.  Not on Presidents Day.)  Just one letter – or postcard, or newspaper article perfect for a friend, or whatever.

It seems as if the only handwritten mail I send these days are thank you notes and condolence cards.

I’m going to change that in February.  Want to play along?

Mindy, brushing up her penmanship (and thanking Mary)

1.  So, how do you do this writing retreat thing, and what do you do while you’re there?

I get together with four writing friends for retreats, a couple of times a year.  (This time, alas, one of our group could not make it because, ironically, she had too much writing to get done!)  We alternate hosting the retreat at each other’s houses.  Each retreat is somewhat different from every other; however, the basic idea is the same.  Each writer stakes out a “territory” (a corner of a couch, a bed, whatever).  Each writer, um, writes (or edits or reads or whatever) in that territory when other things aren’t going on, fueling the creative process with liberal amounts of food and drink (see below).

“Other things” generally means meals.  Sometimes, “other things” means discussions (about food, writing, industry gossip, writing, books recently read, writing, family, writing — you get the idea.)  While in our territory, most of us wear earphones-with-iPods, to give us background music and/or to cut down on distractions.

2.  But, um, you write full time.  Why would you need a writing retreat?

There’s a different “energy” about writing retreats.  I know that I’ve structured the time to be away from my family, so I have to make that time work most efficiently.

Also, writing full time means that I’m alone a lot of the time.  Writing retreats give me a chance to put in all my “water cooler” time with my work colleagues.

3.  Hosting four people?  Who has room to host four people in their home?

Some of us (raising my hand high) don’t have the room.  When it’s my turn to host, I “host” at the home of another retreat member.  When I’m the host, I’m responsible for all of the meals (I cook things, freeze them, then re-heat in the physical host’s kitchen), the clean up (one of our hosts uses all paper plates and disposable flatware when she hosts, to limit time spent away from writing), and generally getting the ball rolling (email reminders a couple of weeks before, checking on allergies and food preferences, that sort of thing.)

4.  So, do the guests have it really easy?  Just lazing about, writing, and eating the host’s food?

The guests contribute too.  Each person brings a savory snack (as simple as a bag of chips, as complicated as a Bon Appetit recipe…) and a sweet snack (store-bought or home-made…)  Most people bring beverages of choice (tea, coffee, wine…)  Published authors often bring signed copies of their most recent books.  Everyone brings ideas, concerns, and encouragement.

5.  Exactly how much do you get done in a three-day weekend retreat?

First, let’s clarify the three days.  People generally arrive in the middle of Friday afternoon, and they leave in the middle of Sunday afternoon.  So, it’s really more of a “two day” retreat.  Or, at least, a 48-hour one.

As for how much gets done?  That varies from writer to writer and from retreat to retreat.  Some (especially full-time writers) use the time to draft, plan, and generally decompress from their usual schedules.  Others set truly ambitious writing goals, which they may or may not achieve.

This past weekend, I wrote and edited three entire new chapters (for Darkbeast Rebellion, which has relatively short chapters, so, about 9000 words.)  I also went back and edited the preceding twelve chapters, weaving in two major concepts and picking out one badly-conceived concept, for a net gain of about 3000 more words (and one new chapter, as I broke one existing chapter into two.)  So, I came home with about 12,000 new words, a *much* stronger grasp on the themes and images of the overall novel, and the impression that one major editing pass had been completed.

(One of the other attendees completed 2.5 chapters of a new novel, written in a new-to-her style with new-to-her techniques.  Another attendee completed preparing one novel for submission to agents and determined that a second novel was *not* a good fit for a market she had considered.  Our host, who ended up with some unexpected family obligations during the retreat, wrote a few thousand words and joined in on the above-mentioned conversations.)

So?  What questions do you have about writing retreats?

Mindy, pleased by the weekend’s accomplishments and fired up to dig in for this week!

Some of you may recall a mystery that arose a couple of weeks ago:  Amazon suddenly offered for sale a handful of “New” copies of Girl’s Guide to Witchcraft, the first volume of the Jane Madison series.  I bought them, because I have no more author copies, and I needed a few for promotional ventures.

It turns out that the books came through the “Amazon Buy Back” program.  My understanding is that these books are *generally* books that Amazon customers bought, read, and returned to Amazon through the program, so that Amazon can sell them as used books.  The Girl’s Guide copies that I bought all have Amazon BB tags on the back.

Several of them, though, also had stickers on the front, which led me to believe that they had originally been offered for sale in Borders bookstores.  I believe that Amazon must have bought stock from Borders’ stores as those stores were going out of business.  This belief is further bolstered by the fact that the copies of Girl’s Guide were sent from various Amazon warehouses, as would be the case if local warehouses had stocked up on local bricks-and-mortar stores stock.

So, mystery solved, I think.  Has anyone else seen this – Amazon offering new books at a discount when those books came from Borders?  Or does anyone have any other theories?

Mindy, curious

Earlier this week, I received a great big box o’ books from the Romance Writers of America.  The books are candidates for RWA’s annual writing awards, the RITAs.

RWA does awards a bit differently than SFWA (and, I’m sure than the mystery writers or the horror writers or the western writers or whatever other genre writers — I’m only familiar with SFWA and RWA procedures.)  Any author of a print (not e-only) novel can submit her work for a RITA, sending in a $40 payment and five copies of the book.  RWA parcels out the books to RWA “published author network” members, asking those members to rate the books on a scale from 1 to 9, or to determine that the books are not a romance or were in the wrong category.

Every year, there’s a fair amount of squawking among the membership about the RITA rules and the categories.  Some categories (e.g., novella) are rather sparsely populated — there just aren’t that many novellas published in print.  Other categories (e.g., contemporary series romance) are heavily populated — Harlequin alone publishes at least six books a month in more than a dozen eligible series.  Authors’ names are obvious from their bound books, and some authors have long-standing reputations built over hundreds of novels while others are newcomers without any special cachet.  There are 12 separate categories, with somewhat arcane divisions between them (e.g., “historical romance” is a separate category from “historical regency romance”).  This year, judges have been warned that a large number of the entrants may not actually be writing romances; they might have submitted their non-romance works in hopes of getting recognition from RWA and increasing their sales to the avid group of romance readers.

Some years back, I read the preliminary round, and then I read the final round (for contemporary series romance – before my own MOGUL’S MAYBE MARRIAGE and DADDY DANCE were out in that category).  While I did not find all the books in the final round to be of equally high caliber, I did agree that the book that won was the best of the lot.  (Of course, there might have been better-to-me books that didn’t make the finals; in fact, I thought that two books I read in preliminary round were better than some of the finalists.)

In short, the RITAs are messy, most people have quibbles about the process, and many people have grave reservations.  (And that’s completely separate from the people who don’t believe that any awards should ever be made for any books, because books are art.)

Nevertheless, I think that the system generally works.  And I think the system works better than one based on recommendations from members (as is the SFWA system) – it’s open to more people and fights against quid pro quo recommendations.

I have eight books to read in the next seven weeks.  I won’t be able to comment on any of them.  Some would say that I’ve already commented too much on the process.

So, what do you think?  If you’re involved with the RITAs, do you think the system should be changed?  If you’re experienced with other awards programs, how do you think literary awards should be made?

Mindy, rolling up her sleeves

Many of the museums in Washington, D.C. are free – all of the Smithsonians, the National Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress, the Folger, etc.  Years ago, one of my favorite free museums was the Newseum, located just down the road from me, in Rosslyn, Virginia.  Alas, the Newseum decided to move downtown, into swanky new digs with views of the Capitol.  After *years* of construction, the new Newseum opened — with a hefty admission fee. (Similarly, the Spy Museum, the Museum of Crime and Punishment, and Mme Tussaud’s all charge admission, as do some of the smaller art museums.)

I’ve been to the new Newseum three or four times, paying my entrance fee each time (around $20 – it’s varied over time.)  I’ve also been to some fun educational programming there, like last year’s Reel Journalism series (screening movies about journalism, chosen by big-name journalists interviewed by Nick Clooney.)  Every time I go, I feel as if I don’t have enough time to see everything I want to see; I don’t have enough time to study the well-curated exhibits, to see the dozens of films they have throughout, to explore the interactive exhibits.

So, we decided to join the museum for a year.  And we spent a full morning going through just two exhibits — one on Neil Leifer’s sports photography (ah, how my knowledge of sports has grown in the past ten years…) and one on Pulitzer-Prize-winning photography.

The Pulitzer exhibit was devastating.  Yeah, there were a handful of unabashedly upbeat photos.  And another handful of photos where good things happened after terrible things (e.g. rescues from burning buildings, people saved from rushing flood waters).  But the majority of the photos — or, at least, the majority of the ones that stick in my mind after viewing the exhibit — are horrifying comments on war, on civil unrest, on the terrifying things that we humans do to one another.

No, I won’t detail the ones that most stick in my mind.  Many of the photos were familiar to me, but even more were not.  You can browse through a bit of the exhibit here:

http://www.newseum.org/exhibits-and-theaters/permanent-exhibits/pulitzer/

I don’t have any great photographic skills, but it occurs to me that these photos are like the best-written short fiction.  They capture an entire story — a beginning, middle, and end — all in one frame.  Photographers talk about *making* pictures (not *taking*, as I say in my everyday parlance) – and the reason why is clear in this exhibit.

It’s just sobering to think about why so many of those stories have the same themes — fire and starvation and the gritty weariness of rescuers and the brutalization of man by man.

Mindy, still thinking

I’m over at Magical Words today (a great blog by writers for writers and readers, with a strong emphasis on genre fiction…), writing about the Muddle in the Middle (the challenge to keep a novel manuscript moving through the middle of the story.)

Here’s the post:

http://www.magicalwords.net/mindy-klasky/the-muddle-in-the-middle/

Stop by and let me know what you think!

Mindy, off to the middle again…

As I write this, I am looking forward to an event at the Shakespeare Theatre, which I will attend tonight:  James Earl Jones will be interviewed by the artistic director of the theatre, “Actors’ Studio”-style.  I’m sure I’ll have a lovely time.  I might even forgive James Earl Jones for getting me in trouble.

You see, this will be the second time that I see James Earl Jones in person.  The first time, I was in elementary school.  Mr. Jones visited my school, and he performed a reading of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.  The reading was intended for older students, but there were spaces left in the theater, and we youngsters were allowed to sit on the floor and listen.

I had no idea who this man was, or why we were being told to be on our best behavior.  I did not understand the story of George and Lenny.  I was not entirely sure what was going on.  I just knew that the event was Special.  That I was Lucky to attend.  That I could Learn a lot.

And I knew that the impressive man with the gigantic voice was telling the story of two men, one of whom repeatedly referred to the other as “you bastard.”  (As in, “Lenny, you bastard, you can’t talk to Curly’s wife.”  Or, you know, something like that.  It’s been a long time since I read the novel.)

That night, my parents headed out to dinner with some friends.  My younger brother and I had a baby sitter, who prepared supper for the two of us.  When the food was ready, she told me to call my brother.  (He was playing outside.)  I opened up the front door of the house, took the deepest breath I could, and shouted, “Ben, you bastard!  Come eat dinner!”

And that’s how James Earl Jones got me a timeout.

(Do any of my Greenhill friends remember this event?)

Mindy, amused