A Persona is No Substitute for Work

Karin Kallmaker Craft of Writing

It’s not an outrageous assumption that entertainment is going to be entertaining. When selecting shows to see in Las Vegas this past week, we had to balance the likes and dislikes of our family of four. Sure-fire winner was Blue Man Group. We all loved it. Two hours of pure fun, thought-provoking imagery and clever wit that transcended language. It had energy, great live music and laugh-out-loud visuals. Read More

Something More Permanent Than Books!

Karin Kallmaker Events and Appearances, Sisters of the Pen

YTour 2009 Bella Books authors

I’ve long said that books are forever, and a book in a library collection is immortality. Some ten feet off the ground, caulking gun in one hand and a firm grip on the ladder with the other, I was mulling over the permanence of a house. A house is where a family will live, a child grow up, have kids of her own maybe, and what could be more immortal than the family chain? As I squeezed out that first shaky bead of caulk, someone below me said, “Remember! This is the front of the house, and it’s what everyone will see for years and years.” Read More

cover The Kiss that Counted, Goldie winner medal, Lambda winner medal, by Karin Kallmaker "Full of suspense and mystery, deeply moving characters and storytelling." Lambda Literary Review

Sleepless in the City that Never Sleeps

Karin Kallmaker Awards and Reviews, Kiss That Counted, Sisters of the Pen

The sky is slowly lightening outside my hotel room window. It’ll be a while before it can compete with the marquees on Times Square, which run all night and day with blazing neon and massive LED displays. One of the marquees is the iconic Coca-Cola sign. A while ago I noticed it wasn’t red and white, and wondered if gray and white were colors for the Witching Hour. Then I saw that “inside” the sign were animated workers doing amusing clean-up tasks. I wondered how many people were awake to see the fun. Read More

Fun with First Lines

Karin Kallmaker Craft of Writing, Sisters of the Pen

One of the fun sessions at the GALLA Festival was Heidi Boehringer‘s Writing Tales from the Edge. The session was designed to get writers focused on the act of writing… just keeping the pen moving without censoring. One exercise was finishing a short scene based on the opening line from a famous novel. With apologies to Edmund White for butchering his opening to Hotel de Dream, I had a great deal of fun with the inspiration of

Cora never thought for a moment her young husband could die.

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