Karen Sandler

Author: Karen Sandler

  • The Shopping Gene

    If I say, let’s go shopping, and the destination is the local mall, or the outlet stores, or those cute little shops on Main Street, does that invitation fill you with dread or excited anticipation? Does the necessity of going in search of something you can’t do without seem like torture, or are you happy for the chance at the hunt?

    While I am not by any means a shopaholic, I do like shopping. I generally prefer it when there’s something in particular I’m looking for. For instance, I had a lot of fun shopping for dress shirts and ties for my husband’s Christmas gift. I get a great deal of satisfaction finding a shirt in the right size, the perfect color, and the tie that pulls it all together. It’s also nice when the price is right.

    JacketBut I am aware that there are others who just despise shopping. When the jacket we’d ordered from Amazon for my son didn’t fit right, nor was it warm enough, we decided to shop locally for another jacket before he returned to the East Coast. To say he dislikes shopping is putting it mildly. While I see it as an opportunity to search out exactly the right thing at the right price, his reaction is more along the lines of dread.

    But we truly lucked out. We headed for Eddie Bauer at the outlet stores. It just so happened they’d gotten in a couple of “East Coast” jackets, jackets that were rated for zero to 20 degrees. It was a mistaken delivery in chilly but still rather temperate Northern California. Because they knew the jackets were too warm for 99% of their shoppers, they were selling the two at a 50% discount.

    Woo-hoo for us. One of the jackets fit fine and was plenty warm. We added a few pairs of jeans to the pile and in very short order we’d completed our shopping goal. I felt triumphant and fulfilled. My son was just relieved.

    So how about you? Is shopping one of your favorite activities? Or would you rather chew dirt?

  • Merry Christmas

    Christmas 2012b-sTo all who celebrate the holiday, I hope you have a blessed, joyful, family-filled day.

  • Who Are You (woot-woot)?

    Tankborn smlThis week, YA Highway asks the questions How do you decide on names? Would you ever name a character after a friend/family member/ex?

    Back when I was writing romances, I wanted everyday names for my characters. So I kept a baby names book near my computer. I’d flip through it for my hero’s or heroine’s name, looking for one that seemed to match the character’s personality. When I found the right name, a little bell would go off inside me. I could see the character that much more clearly.

    When I started writing the Tankborn series, I couldn’t use a baby name book anymore. The Tankborn trilogy is set hundreds of years in the future. To set the tone for the world, the names needed to be a little more exotic than what’s on offer in the naming books. Also, I had a multi-ethnic cast and I needed names that would suit them. So I had to rely on the Web, and sites that listed, for instance, Brahmin or Chinese or Zimbabwe given names and their meanings. Here’s one of my fave sites for finding international names.

    Kayla, the name of my main character in Tankborn, isn’t super unusual. At least it isn’t now. When I first came up with it, back when I was writing the movie script that later became Tankborn, I thought I’d made up the name Kayla. Not so much.

    When I wrote the first book, I did make up some of the names of other characters: Tala, Jal, Tanti, Quila. In real life, people make up names all the time for their children, why wouldn’t they in my future world? I used made up names mostly for GENs, sometimes for lowborns. And just as with Kayla, sometimes the names I thought were made up, that originated with me, were actually “real” names (Pia and Risa come to mind).

    For my trueborns, I used real names of various ethnicities. There’s Devak (Indian), my main male character, Devak’s friend, Junjie (Chinese), Devak’s father and mother, Ved (Indian) and Rasia, (Indian). Raashida (African), is an important character in Awakening, the upcoming follow-on to Tankborn.

    Do I ever use the names of real people in my books? Yes, although I don’t match the character to the real person. I just “borrow” the real name because I like it and it works for my book. I borrowed Zul (Devak’s great-grandfather) and Azad (Devak’s dead half-brother) from people I actually know.

    How about you? If you write, how do you come up with those character names? If you’re a reader, have you ever stumbled across a name that didn’t seem to fit the character, or a name that was absolutely perfect?

  • It’s My Birthday, and I’ll Blog if I Want To

    Phone 12-12-12I have the coolest birthday in the world, most especially today’s. I’m lucky enough to have a birthday in December when all the Christmas festivities are in full swing (and Chanukah, since I married my Jewish hubby 30+ years ago). I like that my natal day is early enough in the month that I always got plenty of presents both for my birthday and for Christmas.

    Last night, I jolted out of a light doze at an auspicious time. I looked at the clock, and it read 12:12am. How perfect is that to open my eyes on my birthday and see it was 12:12am on 12-12-12?

    Yes, I can hear you saying, “That was really 00:12. It wasn’t 12:12 yet.” Well, I just so happened to look up from my work (okay, I was Christmas shopping online) and I saw the above on my desk phone. I caught a quick shot of it, then also took a picture of my computer clock below.

    Computer 12-12-12This picture has the extra bonus of a few tantalizing words from my current work-in-progress–Revolution, book 3 of the Tankborn trilogy. You’ll want to click the photo to get the larger size.

    I hope you enjoy the run-up to the holidays, whichever end-of-year festivities you celebrate. As for me, I’m going to party tonight with a few good friends. Because this date is special.

  • I Love You, You’re Perfect…Now I’m Gonna Revise You

    rewriting_265x265This week, with November and NaNoWriMo in the rear view mirror, YA Highway’s Road Trip Wednesday asks, How do you approach editing/revising?

    So, here’s the first most important thing about revising. You should write your draft knowing that you not only don’t have to get it perfect the first time through, you’re not expected to get it perfect. That’s one thing about NaNoWriMo that’s pretty great. The demand is so enormous (having to average close to 1700 words a day, every single day of November), you can’t possibly revise as you go. You just have to barrel ahead, getting the words down. But you have that freedom every time you write. You can always fix it later.

    Here’s the second most important thing–nothing that you’ve written is sacred. Nothing. Nothing. Every chapter, scene, paragraph, word, even character must be subservient to the story. If something doesn’t work, even if it worked at first, but in the course of revising is no longer relevant, that beautiful chapter, scene, paragraph, word, or character must go. And you must be ruthless in cutting out that dead weight.

    Here’s the third most important thing about revising. You must approach your revisions as if you were the editor rather than the writer of the book. You must go in there looking for trouble, not expecting a masterpiece. And you should never take it personally. Even the best manuscripts go wrong sometimes.

    Now that we’ve got those three basic musts down, here are a few other things I’ve learned over the course of writing and revising 20+ books.

    1. Give it a rest. After you’ve finished your manuscript, give yourself some time so you can return to it with a fresher eye. How much time? I personally don’t like to go longer than a week, and it’s usually just a few days. But you might need a couple weeks or even a month.
    2. Give it a read and think story as you go. Are the story questions answered? Are all the setups paid off? Is there extraneous material that doesn’t move the story forward? Are there characters who don’t pull their weight? This is where your major revising will be happening, where your bigger problems are solved.
    3. Give it another read and look at characters and details. Are your characters’ actions & dialogue consistent for them? Have you introduced word or phrasing repetitions in the course of your first big revision? Ditto for typos?
    4. Give it a final read. Are there any parts that just don’t flow? Awkward phrasing, expository dialogue, settings that are either overly detailed or not detailed enough? Anything confusing that you think a reader might stumble over or have a problem following?
    5. Let someone else give it a read. If you have a critique group or a beta reader, preferably someone who has never heard about the story, ask them to read it. It has to be someone whose opinion you completely respect and trust. And you have to be open-minded about their feedback.
    6. As needed, give the manuscript one last revision based on reader feedback.

    So is it a hard and fast rule that you must give your book three (and only three, no more, no less) readthroughs? No. But is it necessary to pay attention to all of the above elements while revising? I’d say yeah. If you can do that with one pass through the book, that’s great. As long as you’re reading with an editors eye, and are brutally honest with yourself about what’s working and what’s not.

    Happy revising!