Kimberly A. Cook

Military Romance Author

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Lion Cub Triplets Meet Your Very Big Dad!

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by Kimberly A. Cook         (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

The Oregon Zoo put this great almost cute-meet clip up a couple of weeks ago and it has more than a million views. This is what happens when Dad gets to meet the lion cub triplets for the first time. Seems he’s a bit surprised by all the activity.

It’s hard to keep your tough guy image when the kids are crawling all around. He adjusted to the new brood just fine and was happily seen grooming the cubs later that day. Awwwwww. Don’t think the cubs were scared a bit!

How Do Writers Learn, Purge And Know What Their Book Is About?

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by Kimberly A. Cook              (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Met with my writer support group this past weekend and it always makes me feel better, more motivated and not quite so neurotic. We creatives have challenges on many levels when it comes to combining life and art.

There were three topics which came up that I thought it would be fun to discuss. Here goes.

1. We don’t learn a writing or life lesson until we are ready; no matter how many times it tries to smack us in the chops.  An experienced writer declared she made a breakthrough with her current memoir when she realized who her ideal reader would be and that she was actually writing a long feature story. A trained news journalist and business writer, this shift in mind revelation made all the difference in the world when she was able to discover it.

When I crossed over from newspaper writing to fiction, it seemed pretty easy for me since I had been the features section editor on the paper. Feature stories are some of the best training in the world for fiction since your story lives and dies with quotes (dialogue), you have a beginning, middle and end of the feature (same as a chapter and book), and the one difference is instead of tying up the end of the story, you put a honk’in hook at the end to drag the reader into the next chapter. My fiction chapters have always been about the same length as a long feature story, imagine that.

2. Is cleaning our offices and purging files procrastination or part of the creative process? Yes! Right on both counts. But we decided as a group that its more of the process for organizing chaos and letting your muse get ready to sweep out the cobwebs in the subconscious and gear up for the next project. Now if this takes years, there is a bit of a procrastination problem, but it took Margaret Mitchell twelve years to write “Gone With The Wind,” so what do we know about deadlines? To each writer their own process.

3. Only the writer/author knows what the story is going to be and that may be a crap shoot on any given day. My writing teacher Dee Lopez used to say,” No one really knows what their book is about until after they’ve written at least eight chapters.” Many times what you find when you finish a first draft of fiction is it started out as one book and ended up as another; that is the magic of imagination, fairy dust and creation. Which also means no one else can write your book for you, you have to do it yourself.

So, back to writing!

 

Can You Take Harbor Seal Photos From Your Porch?

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by Kimberly A. Cook         (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

My last photography posting had so many nice people comment and like it I decided to follow-up with another photo topic. When I worked on the newspaper and took my own photos, there was a system I learned from my photography classes in college.

This is actually a mid-range photo since I was so far away. The pulled back photo made the harbor seals look like raw tapioca.
This is actually a mid-range photo since I was so far away. The pulled back photo made the harbor seals look like raw tapioca.

First take an overall shot of the area/subject, then look for details and close-ups to describe the story. That is how I ended up with photos for my feature stories and/or photo essays. While I might not use all of the photos in the newspaper, in fact I rarely did, taking more shots saved the day when I’d need to hunt for pictures to help fill space.

Now I keep those same rules in mind for a potential blog post, article or video I might be working on in the future.

To illustrate the system, here are pictures I took on a recent trip to Depoe Bay, Oregon, one of my favorite places on the planet. Munching a leisurely breakfast that Saturday, my sister let me know the harbor seals were hauled out on the rocks.

This is what a zoom lens, leaning against a post and keeping your breathing even can do. That's not tapioca after all.
This is what a zoom lens, leaning against a post and keeping your breathing even can do. That’s not tapioca after all.

Grabbed the camera and sauntered down the porch of the condos to get an aerial view. One cannot wait when the time, tide, seals and weather all create a photo opportunity – getting all those variables together is a rare event. So I grabbed both Canon cameras to ensure I would have focal length to get up close.

Details count. Did you see the Blue Heron in the first photo above?
Details count. Did you see the Blue Heron in the first photo above?

Photographers know the sweetest light to take photos is the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset, but tides and seals have their own schedules. Some of the photos I took are not as color-saturated as I would like, washed out by the sun, but I’ll take it.

Always have a camera, cell phone camera or video camera with you. You never know when seals may show up to interrupt your breakfast!

Got Some Knitting Time? The Penguins Need Us!

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by Kimberly A. Cook           (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

I’m always looking for new fun things to knit and a friend alerted me to this current need. The penguins Downunder in Australia need sweaters to help them recover from oil spills. Knitting sweaters for penguins? Does life get any better than that?

So for this Quirky Friday let’s all whip out our knitting needles and get busy knitting small sweaters for our fav flipper guys and gals. Check out the video. Happy Quirky Friday!

Do You Have Writer Persistence?

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by Kimberly A. Cook            (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Cleaning out the papers in my office last weekend , a lifelong quest, I stumbled across my production worksheet for 2013. Very organized, all my writing projects listed, it was a plan. Unfortunately life intervened and not one of those projects got finished.

Persistence gets bulbs out of the ground to become flowers. Make like a bulb and bloom. Spring rocks!
Persistence gets bulbs out of the ground to become flowers. Make like a bulb and bloom. Spring rocks!

But, it does give me a head start on my 2014-2015 to do list! The cliché “life is what happens while you’re making plans” is a cliché because life does happen. The older I get the more I’ve learned to give myself a break, to put on my big girl shoes and keep moving. The universe does respond to action and it’s harder to hit a moving target, so serpentine! as my Drill Sergeant would say.

So it was with heartwarming glee that I read about an author who was rejected 111 times over nine years trying to get his fiction novel “The Lost Get-Back Boogie,” published. When it did get published, it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. See, it does happen. Persistence can pay off.

The author? James Lee Burke. A co-worker at the day job was reading his book, “In The Moon of Red Ponies.” I’m always spying on what people are reading; market research. She told me his words were “strung together like silk.” Now that makes me sit up and stare. What writer wouldn’t kill to have a reader describe their prose that way?

Needless to say, I will be getting a book or two of his to put in my read pile. Whenever I get a little blue about where my writing career is not going, these kind of success stories lift my spirits and make me keep chugging along. Am I doing this for the money? Hell no. I write because I must, pure and simple.

If I can entertain and educate along the way, that’s gravy. Maybe one day I too will be one of those 45-year overnight successes. It could happen! Be persistent with your writing dreams, they might come true. Surprise yourself.

Link:      http://jamesleeburke.com/about_the_author.html

Do We Really Need Every Social Media Platform?

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by Kimberly A. Cook           (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Working at the day job last week an invite popped up from my sister to add her to my LinkedIn account. Since I don’t participate in LinkedIn for my day job, thought this a tad bit odd. Checked with her and she didn’t send it.

Travelocity Gnome is going to need more backup than the M&Ms kids to protect my digital footprint these days.
Travelocity Gnome is going to need more backup than the M&Ms kids to protect my digital footprint these days.

Either LinkedIn was prowling, there is another virus on LinkedIn or her computer, or yada yada yada. I am so tired of defending my digital social media space from viruses, hackers and spammers while I am trying to get real writing work done.

More than once I’ve thought of taking all my computers offline and keeping one dummy for surfing. I’d be safer unless the others were physically stolen. The only reason I got on Facebook and LinkedIn were for the writing biz for one and a volunteer job on the other.

I have several author/writing friends who use LinkedIn and like it. I, however, might be shutting it down. I don’t need a job right now and I can’t reply to anybody while I am trying to find time to write. Then I stumbled across this Wall Street Journal article about how they are going to have folks write for LinkedIn and be influencers, but only 500 or so, and they won’t be paid. Sounds like free content to me!

When I got on Facebook for the business I was immediately found by a ton of folks from high school outside my little clique; most I barely remembered! For us writers who need some safe space to create and write, it felt like Facebook was rustling through my lingerie drawer. Enough!

Between this blog, Twitter and my web site, I’m thinking that might be enough digital real estate for now. Maybe more than I need. Because in the end, writing and finding time to write come before marketing, really. It’s hard to sell a book that isn’t written or won’t be written this year or next. Get thee writing!

Link:     http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/02/19/linkedin-to-allow-all-users-to-post-articles/