It's Release Week!

Well, thanks to a delay at Amazon and a weekend internet outage, release "day" has officially become Release Week!

Yes! All I Never Wanted is LIVE and ON SALE (the $.99 Amazon price tag is temporary, so get it while you can)! 

Here are the buy links for the various outlets:

Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Kobo
iTunes
Google Play

Also, in honor of this hot new release, Rise (last year's book) is FREE on Amazon and Kobo for a limited time (and $.99 on Nook).

Amazon

Barnes and Noble
Kobo

iTunes

Google Play

What can you do to help?

Well, if you've read it, reviews are definitely helpful right now, since they encourage other people who might not be familiar with my stories to take a chance:

As always, Klein's beauty is in the unpredictable ending which delivered the justice this story and the characters deserved. . . . Katie Klein KNOWS how to do romance. –★★★★ Michelle (Goodreads)

Retweeting/Sharing my posts is also a nice way to spread the word! Make sure you're following me on FB and/or Twitter.

Also, if you're on Goodreads, feel free to add it to your "To Read" list.

Tweets and Facebook posts help, too, so don't be shy about telling your friends (and be sure to tag me in any posts so I can send you all the *thank you's* and *hearts*).

ALL I NEVER WANTED (@katiekleinbooks) is now available! (And, at #99c the lowest price it’s going to be.) Trent ♥ Summer #yalit #romance #kindlebargain #bookbuzz #whattoread https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R63RWNC

*Whew*

Promo wears me out, y'all. 

I have one last ridiculously busy grading week, and then I can slowly ease into summer. I'm already itching to start something new--if there's anything I've learned in the last 10+ years, it's that I can't not write for very long. It's just not a good look for me. :P

Be Brilliant!

~Katie~

Just Showing my Work!

So . . . I'm about to release All I Never Wanted. 

The cover has been revealed, the synopsis is posted, the bookstore links are in progress, and, if you're on my newsletter list, you just received the first five chapters to peruse. :P

Now that I'm in the home stretch, I thought I'd share some screenshots of a few of the things I see on my end when I'm working on a project. 

First, I work in Scrivener, which is an absolute Godsend (i.e. I highly recommend it). 

Here's my screenshot of the Prologue:

And here are some of the final stats for this particular project:

Here's part of the "Bible" I use to keep my characters and locations straight:

It's so easy to forget the name of a character or the name of a shop or town, so as soon as I write something new into the story, a note immediately goes into my "Bible."

This is what I love most about Scrivener: everything I need to write the story is in one convenient location. 

Even my characters:

Be Brilliant!

~Katie~ 

Coming v. Soon!

What happens when a boy from a privileged, upper-middle-class family falls for a girl in a rehabilitation facility accused of murdering her best friend?

In a world of mansions, expensive prep schools, and elite colleges, where money means favors and the right price will buy a ticket into or out of just about any situation, Trent Moreau is living easy. 

Drugs, parties, breaking and entering, traffic violations, property damage . . . it’s nothing for Trent’s father to swoop in and buy his son’s way out of trouble. Only this time, he and his brother have gone too far.

After ruining one of his father’s executive gatherings, Crewe is sent to rehab, and Trent is forced to live on campus (and on a budget) under the watchful eye of a roommate who reports back to (and is likely getting paid by) Trent’s father.

When he’s caught tampering with files at Crewe’s facility, Trent is assigned (more) community service hours to be fulfilled by spending time with seventeen-year-old Summer Evans, resident psychopath. 

The previous year, Summer’s best friend was found dead in her backyard swimming pool. Summer, the only known witness, remembers nothing about that night. Because foul play was suspected and she was a minor, Summer and her family agreed to rehab in lieu of a prison sentence.  

But the more time Trent spends with Summer, and the more he learns about the events surrounding her friend’s mysterious death, the less sense it all makes. 

What if Summer isn’t guilty at all?

What if she’s innocent, and he can prove it?

As Trent quietly falls for the extraordinary artist, his investigation is going to take a dramatic turn, sending him spiraling deeper into the egotism and entitlement edging his own privileged lifestyle. 

Flat Characters vs. Round Characters

What's the difference between flat and round characters?

A flat character will have a fixed set of (usually predictable) traits. None of these are likely to drive or create any real conflicts within the story. 

Round characters are more complex and have traits that often conflict with one another. 

An old man can be both a miser with his time and affection, but generous financially to the charities he supports. 
The mother can be frivolous with her money, but responsible when it comes to her career or children. 
The teenager may not speak to his parents, but will willingly offer his friends advice/help whenever they ask. 

The best characters are rife with contradictions.

There's nothing inherently wrong with incorporating a flat character into your story, but they don't deserve center stage or even a strong supporting role. 

Keep them strictly to the background. 

Be Brilliant!

~Katie~       

Just Start

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

I'll say it ad nauseam.

Don't wait until you're inspired to write. 

You're more likely to find inspiration once you sit down at the computer or open that notebook and put the pen to the page or fingers to the keyboard than you are maneuvering blindly about, waiting for that perfect "lightning" sentence or word or idea.

Don't wait for "the mood."

There is no mood. The mood doesn't exist.

(But if there is a "mood," again, you certainly won't find it until you sit down and begin to work.)

Put your current mood to work.

Don't know what to write? 

Start with a prompt. Start with a character. Start with a setting. Start with a list of words that you love. Start with "I don't know what to write." Fill the page if you must.

Just start.

Be Brilliant!

~Katie~

Plot and Character

According to Josip Novakovich (Fiction Writer's Workshop), plot can grow out of character, but character doesn't necessarily grow out of plot.

Stock characters, for instance--let's use a detective as our example--don't always change as the plot thickens around them, as they grow closer to solving the murder. In the next book with a new case to solve, the detective is likely to be the same dependable gentleman he was before. If he's part of a series, then these books could be read in any order and very little information would be lost in the process.

A well-rounded character acting in unpredictable ways, however, will naturally drive the plot, as the decisions he makes cause new things to happen. If done correctly he will, at times, become his own contradiction. This is what makes him intriguing. 

There's nothing wrong with writing a story with a stock character--a character doesn't have to change to be worth reading--but it helps to know before you begin what you're trying to accomplish with your tale, and which kind of character will best serve your story's purpose. 

Be Brilliant!

~Katie~ 
 

On Making Time

I love what Dorothea Brande (Becoming a Writer) says about making time for Art:

"There is almost no wage slave so driven that he cannot snatch a quarter of an hour from a busy day if he is in earnest about it."

But Katie, Brande wrote this the early 1930s! Of course there was time to create. They didn't have television or Netflix or the internet. They didn't drive their kids to and from practices every night of the week. They didn't have news and information tossed at them from every angle from one day to the next.

Yes, dear reader, this is true, but Brande's generation dealt with its own struggles, and the point here is that if we have something worth saying (or writing) or something worth making or something worth inventing, then it's up to us to be good stewards of our time.

We can all find an extra 30 minutes in our day--it's probably just a matter of turning off Pinterest or Facebook and staying away from Netflix for a while, or even waking up a few minutes early. 

What it comes down to is our priorities. We make time for what matters most to us. If that priority is Netflix, then we should own it without lamenting there's "no time" to write down the story that's swimming in our heads.

Be Brilliant (especially when it comes to your time)!

~Katie~