Karen Sandler

Author: Karen Sandler

  • Desert Island Necessities (What does an author really need?)

    Ferry-2A sImagine, if you will, that your cruise ship hit an iceberg, encountered a hurricane or wandered into the Bermuda Triangle. You’ve managed to escape unscathed and have landed on a desert island all by your lonesome. Abundant food is everywhere, just waiting for you to pluck it from a tree or bush, but what will ease your loneliness? And if you happen to be an author like me, how will you get your work done (sorry, no slackers, even for the shipwrecked).

    While you sit on a beautiful sandy beach bemoaning the loss of that gorgeous sequined dress (or killer tux) that you’d planned to wear to the captain’s dinner, ten crates from the wreckage float up on shore. You check the labels and are delighted to discover that these boxes hold exactly what you would most want, both to soothe you personally, and to keep you on track writing your novel, all while trapped on a desert island awaiting rescue.

    So, what’s in the first five boxes?  Here’s my list, everything I need for personal comfort:

    1) Chocolate (preferably dark)

    2) An assortment of novels (science fiction, mystery, romance)

    3) An mp3 player loaded with music (classical, country, soft rock)

    4) A house-sized tent, complete with plush air mattress (a girl needs her comfort)

    5) A flare gun (a girl can also be practical)

    And for my author side:

    1) Chocolate (a necessity for all occasions)

    2) A solar-powered, water-proof, sand-proof laptop

    3) Word processor, dictionary & thesaurus software

    4) At least a dozen ideas (Mmm, probably won’t get those from a box)

    hp photosmart 7205) A cat to keep me company (and that one definitely shouldn’t come floating up in a box)

    So what lands on your white sand beach?  What would be impossible to live without on an isolated island? If you’re an author, what would you desperately need? Let me know in the comments.

  • Spiders and Roaches and Ants, Oh My!

    I’m not a particularly bug-phobic person. The other day at the National Zoo, there was a spider crawling on my hand (maybe it escaped from an exhibit :-)). Rather than shriek, I carefully found a place for him in the bushes. I don’t like flies in my car, but I’m glad to open a window and let them out rather than squish them.

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnts, though, that’s another story. The problem with those little buggers is that you might see one or two on the kitchen counter one day, and the next, they’re swarming over everything. Then it’s out with the ant poison.

    Although I search and destroy inside ants, I tend to take a live and let live attitude with the outside variety. That’s if they agree to the detente. If not, it’s every insect and woman for themselves.

    One day I’d just ridden my horse, and decided to let her graze on some lush green grass. She’s a nicely trained horse, so I just dropped the lead rope and let her pull it along the ground as she ate.

    When snack time was over, I picked up the lead rope which had been dragging through the grass. Moments later I felt a stinging on my wrist. Eew, a big black ant. I brushed it off. I then realized there were many black ants crawling all over my shirt. I slapped them away. Felt more on my neck. Got pretty frantic, dancing around popping off ants, threw off my shirt (I had a sports bra underneath), shook it out, examined every inch of fabric. Phew. No ants.

    Put the shirt back on, then the barn owner came out. I told her what had happened and she starts slapping ants off me. Strip off the shirt again, shake, shake, shake, dance, dance, dance. Finally, finally, I am ant-free. I unclipped the offending lead rope from my mare and led her to her stall holding her halter.

    When I got home, I showered, of course. Darned if another ant didn’t wash down the drain. Brr.

    Another close encounter involved the mailbox. When I went out to get the paper, I checked the mailbox. A Netflix envelope…decorated with ants. I picked up the envelope to shake off the ants and OMG! A zillion ant eggs had been laid overnight under the Netflix envelope and ants were swarming all over the eggs.

    Cue the tingly pricklies (not the good kind). I ran for the hose and blasted the inside of the mailbox for about an hour (okay, just a couple of minutes) until I was pretty sure all those ants and eggs had vacated. Then I got the RAID and sprayed a barrier around the supporting post of the mailbox.

    A few ants returned, probably wondering what had happened to their progeny (and yeah, I felt a little guilty about that). For a while, I was checking every morning to make sure we weren’t hosting an insect kindercare in our mailbox. And it also took a while to finally stop feeling ants crawling on my skin.

    So, any good creepy crawly stories out there? Close encounters of the insect kind? Do share.

    (Addendum: I do have a roach story. It involves a microwave. And the fact that microwaves do not bother a roach one whit)

  • Fake Blood and Shooting After Dark–the Making of a Vampire Flick

    Poster 2At this point in my career, I’m a dedicated novelist. I’m sticking to writing and promoting my traditionally published books like the Tankborn Trilogy and the upcoming Janelle Watkins mysteries, as well as my indie published romances.

    But there was a time when I would fill in the gaps waiting for an editor’s notes or when I was between book contracts by writing screenplays. I’d work on my own or with a producer to write feature length scripts. I was a member of the Writers Guild of America and made a little bit of money as a screenwriter.

    I’d also play around with short films. I’d write a short script (ten or so pages, which translated into about 10 minutes of film), then find ways to produce that script. It helped having a friend with a production studio (The Studio Center) complete with cameras, sound equipment, a green screen, and editing bay. Frank would charge me bargain rates in exchange for directing credit.

    Sweet Tooth was one such project. I’d gotten the idea years before and had intended to write it as a short story. I ended up writing it as a short script instead. Here’s the logline for Sweet Tooth: It’s Trish’s last chance–she either makes big sales at her next WundaWare party, or she’s history.  Trish does her best, but she can’t seem to overcome an irresistible temptation that ruins everything.

    Linda-Karen-Frank Since this was a super-low-budget film, I had to make some choices in the writing of it. I had to be able to shoot the whole film in one location–my house. Since it was a vampire movie and shooting “day for night” wasn’t practical, it all had to be shot after dark. Other than the camera and sound work (and the editing later), I did pretty much everything. I was writer, producer, set decorator, propmaster, continuity, and craft services. All the props came from either my own kitchen or the dollar store. The actors all worked for credit only.

    We shot over two weekends, Friday and Saturday nights. There were a few pitfall in our choice of a production window. First, we started on the night of the summer solstice, which meant it was the longest day of the year. Waiting for “dark” made for a very late start each night.

    Myrtle-deadThe other issue was that the first couple days of shooting were hot-hot-hot (we can get over 100 degrees here) and my AC wasn’t working right. So it was sweltering in the house.

    We were all troopers, though. I got to make some fake blood on the fly (corn syrup with red dye and a touch of chocolate syrup for color). I’d sold Tupperware for 15 months back in my 20s, so I had a lot of fun setting up a display of the faux plasticware, WundaWare. I also enjoyed getting inventive with the various rooms of my house, transforming them into the sets we needed.

    Trish-vanityMy takeaway from the experience is that filmmaking is an entirely different animal than publishing. The biggest difference is how many people are involved. Yes, when you’re publishing a book, you rarely do everything yourself, even if you go indie. There will be an editor, a cover designer, marketing folks, and if it’s print, someone to manufacture the book.

    But imagine if books were written like films are made. You’d have to hire people to act out your characters. You’d have to bring in a propmaster to acquire every single item you’ve described in your scenes, plus a set decorator to lay everything out. A sound crew would have to record the sound or you wouldn’t have any dialogue. A gaffer would have to make sure the lighting is just right, or your reader wouldn’t be able to see who or what is in that scene. And craft services had better feed everyone, or your characters would be getting mighty cranky.

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g9lU5MVM-k]

    That would certainly make things a lot livelier for the novelist–and a lot more expensive and time consuming to write a book. I think I prefer the thinking-it-all-out-in-my-head-and-typing-it-on-my-computer way of doing things. That way, the only one filching out of my refrigerator is me. My characters can just eat air.

    How about you? Have you ever been involved in a film production? I’d love to hear your experience.

  • Social Media for the Genre-Conflicted, Part 2

    KarenSandler_TillTheStarsFade_200pxIn Social Media for the Genre-Conflicted, Part 1, I talked about how I created social media identities for all three of the genres in which I am published–romance, young adult science fiction, and mystery. In part 2, I’ll talk about how I juggle these multiple personalities.

    I’m not yet entirely satisfied with how well I’m managing the task of promoting myself in these disparate genres. In some cases, I’m learning as I go, discovering what works, and stumbling over the pitfalls of what doesn’t. But it’s been a relief to accept the reality that my work doesn’t fit neatly into one pigeonhole. And while I can’t really say that I have something for every reader amongst my 20+ books, there’s certainly plenty of variety.

    Awakening Final cover-s So how do I wrangle the three-headed hydra of my author identity? By promoting myself in a united fashion where I can and splitting my personalities where necessary.

    This blog is one area where I let all three genres come out and play, sometimes together (in more generic posts) and sometimes separately (such as in this one). I do my best to put up a new post at least once a week. If you look through my previous posts, you’ll find that the majority of them are writing-related, along the lines of tips and tricks of the trade. There’s some personal stuff woven in there as well, such as this remembrance of my dad and this post about a childhood memory. I also will do a hybrid like this post, interweaving the personal and the writing craft together.

    Besides this blog, I utilize numerous social media platforms–Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Triberr, Google+, and Linked in. Most of my efforts are focused on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook, despite its shortcomings, does have one bit of functionality that makes it very easy to manage multiple identities–Pages. By logging into my profile, Karen Sandler, I can access all of the four pages that I administrate. There’s a handy little wheel in the upper right-hand corner that allows me to switch from my profile to my author page, the Tankborn page, the mystery page, and the OnFireFiction page. I don’t have to log out of Facebook to post as those alternate identities.

    Full CoverTwitter, on the other hand, requires a separate login for each identity. It would be pretty crazy-making if I was logging in and logging out of the various Twitter accounts I use. Instead, I’ve installed several browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE, and Opera), and login to a different identity on each browser.

    For me, that means I’m logged in as @karensandlerYA on Firefox (my favorite browser), @karensandler on Chrome, @OnFireFiction on IE, and @tankborn on Opera. I can hop back and forth from one to the other, retweet posts that I think the followers of multiple feeds would find interesting, and keep track of who I’m following and who’s following me.

    Why not use a tool like Hootsuite? I do use Hootsuite, but I haven’t figured out a way to tweet as a different identity than the one I’m logged into. In other words, if I’m logged in as @karensandlerYA on Firefox, even if I select the @karensandler tab, my tweets will be identified as having come from @karensandlerYA. If there’s someone out there who knows differently, please tell me in the comments!

    As for the other social media sites, Google+, Pinterest, Triberr, and Linked in, I’ve so far had less of a presence there. Triberr automatically feeds through all my blog posts (a fantastic tool for reaching new followers). I will post the link to my blog posts on Google+ manually. I haven’t discovered an automated way to accomplish that. I feel a little freer to post what might be considered controversial opinions on Google+, while I mostly keep politics out of Twitter and Facebook.

    I think Pinterest is extremely cool, but I just don’t get on the site much (browsing the wonderful images there is a real time suck). And I don’t think Linked in is as useful to authors as it might be for more business-related professions.

    The question I’m continually asking myself as I post and tweet and blog–what works? My goal is to sell more books. To do that, readers have to discover me. So, do regular blog posts, status updates on Facebook and Google+, tweets on Twitter, and Pinterest pins accomplish that? I confess I haven’t yet got all the answers.

    Where are you finding success? What do you think produces results? I’d love to hear about your experience.

  • When Fiction Becomes Future…or Present

    KarenSandler_TillTheStarsFade_200pxScience fiction is a funny genre. There are those (like me) who devour it, who sometimes feel there’s something missing in a book that doesn’t include at least a little imagined science. Then there are those who just don’t get the genre, are completely alienated by it. To them, it’s weird and unreal.

    Yet in the best science fiction, there’s nothing more real. It looks ahead to what might be and extrapolates not just the science, but how people adapt to the science. It can show how one change, small or large, completely transforms a people, a society.

    The Green Movement in Iran and the more recent Arab Spring got me thinking about a Larry Niven story I read thirty or so years ago. “Flash Crowd” showed the impact of the transfer booth, an instantaneous, essentially free form of travel. You step into a transfer booth down on the corner near your house (like a way cooler bus stop) and in the next moment you’re downtown, or at the university or at the local mall.

    What happens in the story is that folks start hearing about something interesting going on at Santa Monica mall (a stretch of several pedestrian-only open air blocks in Santa Monica, CA) and all those people jump into transfer booths. This near immediate influx of people on the mall leads to a riot, something that never could have happened if folks had to climb into their cars, negotiate Los Angeles freeway traffic, find a place to park, etc. Easy availability of transfer booths = riot.

    Transfer booths haven’t been invented yet, but think about their virtual equivalent. The Internet. Facebook. Twitter. Texting. The demonstrators during the Arab Spring used those near instantaneous forms of communication to organize, to plan, to keep their compatriots and sympathizers and the outside world updated as to conditions on the ground. The protesters couldn’t instantaneously appear in the streets of Cairo or Damascus, but the Internet and cell phones have facilitated their movements.

    What Larry Niven predicted when he published “Flash Crowd” in 1973 didn’t come literally true. We still haven’t figured out how to instantaneously transport matter from point A to point B. But that phenomenon of informing the world in an instant has come to pass and in the case of the Arab Spring (despite the current state of affairs in Syria), I think that can be a good thing.

    Have you read a book or a short story that has projected a possible future? Have you seen that projected future become now? Leave a comment. Include the title and author if you have it.