“Yongrui and the Tree of Life” is a story about sickness and healing, faith and art. It combines Chinese and Garden of Eden mythology, brush painting, and family dynamics.
“Yongrui and the Tree of Life” won first place in the 2015 Segullah Fiction contest. Segullah is an online journal featuring the writing of LDS women.
“The Five Year Journal” is a short story that examines four days in Hannah Rinehart’s life, over a five year period.
“The Five Year Journal” is a finalist in the 2015 Mormon Lit Blitz contest. Voting will take place at the beginning of June.
Image Credits: Chinese brushes image by smilla4 via flickr, Creative Commons license; journal by Smallest Forest via flickr, Creative Commons license
http://www.katherinecowley.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Katherine-Cowley-Logo-2-1030x589.png00Katherine Cowleyhttp://www.katherinecowley.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Katherine-Cowley-Logo-2-1030x589.pngKatherine Cowley2015-05-23 09:27:342015-05-23 09:29:37Two New LDS Short Stories: “Yongrui and the Tree of Life” and “The Five Year Journal”
Sometimes there are events that make something feel real. Like having the cover of the book I’m going to be published in! Presenting… the cover of Steel and Bone. It’s a steampunk anthology featuring 9 stories. Coming in at 375 pages, there is everything from clairvoyance to floating islands to dinosaurs.
Here’s the cover of Steel and Bone:
As you’ll notice, my name is listed first, and my story, “The Clockwork Seer,” is the first in the collection. The official description of my story, per the back cover and the Goodreads page:
On an island of oddities, a young clairvoyant struggles for normalcy, but deadly automatons have other plans.
I am sort of in love with my story. It’s features a woman named Medina who has a typewriter in her hip. The typewriter, and her other clockwork parts, make it possible for her to survive her visions, which are so violent that otherwise they would be debilitating. Enter a musician from the mainland, mechanical monsters, and an adventure ensues.
I hope that, come June 27th, 2015, you’ll get to know Medina, the clockwork seer. Steel and Bone will be available as both a print book and an ebook. So go add it to Goodreads!
http://www.katherinecowley.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Katherine-Cowley-Logo-2-1030x589.png00Katherine Cowleyhttp://www.katherinecowley.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Katherine-Cowley-Logo-2-1030x589.pngKatherine Cowley2015-05-05 21:48:032015-06-03 15:22:32Cover Reveal: Steel and Bone Anthology
Two years ago I started a book group, with the help and encouragement of some friends. The advantage of starting a book group is that it runs the way I like book groups to run. Not to say that my book group is perfect, but I like it and attend every month.
We have read a fun variety of books, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young adult, classics, and recently released. And two years later, to my surprise, people are still coming.
Someone volunteers to host (or if no one volunteers, I recruit). That person chooses the book, either one with a book group copy at the library or one with at least a few library copies available. Everyone who wants to reads the book does so. (It’s an open invitation book group, so anyone can attend, and you’re not required to read–we’ve had been 3 and 15 people at every book group.) The hostess holds book group at her home (or at mine, if her own is not an option), leads the discussion, and normally provides some sort of treat. There’s also some socializing at the beginning and the end, but we always spend a decent chunk of time on the book.
Image Credit: Evan Bench via flickr, Creative Commons license
http://www.katherinecowley.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Katherine-Cowley-Logo-2-1030x589.png00Katherine Cowleyhttp://www.katherinecowley.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Katherine-Cowley-Logo-2-1030x589.pngKatherine Cowley2015-04-22 13:47:152015-04-22 13:47:15Two Years of Book Group
What do breastfeeding, Aztec fire rituals, family history stories, and porcupine quills have in common?
Answer:
They are all in my new essay titled “Breastfeeding Mama,” which won first place for adult nonfiction in the 2015 Tempe Community Writing Contest.
The History of the Essay:
I originally wrote this essay in January 2012 and submitted it to a writing contest. It sort of worked, but sort of didn’t. It then went through a number of further revisions. I even over-revised it to the point of ruining it. I took over a year off from the essay and then rewrote it, and started submitting it again.
The Essay’s New Home:
This year was the first time for the Tempe Community Writing Contest. The contest was a collaboration between the Tempe Public Library and Arizona State University. There were three categories of writing (fiction, poetry, and nonfiction) and three categories of people (adult, college student, and teenager). Almost 200 people submitted, and my essay was a co-winner for the Adult Nonfiction category.
Last night they had a reception at the Tempe Public Library, and winners got to read selections from their pieces. My husband counted, and there were about 80 people in the audience. And everyone laughed at my writing. Which actually made me very happy, as it is a humorous essay. It’s when you write a humorous essay and people don’t laugh that you need to worry. You should also worry when people throw tomatoes at you. But there were no tomatoes in the library. Only cookies. And (perhaps unfortunately) no one threw any cookies at me.
Read the Essay Online:
The book of winners published by the Tempe Library is available for free online: Tempe Writer’s Forum Volume 1. My essay starts on page 57 of the pdf.
(If you’re interested in reading the honorable mentions, they are available online as well.)
Content warning:
There are both breasts and babies in this essay, both of which are known to make some people feel supremely uncomfortable.
Original heart image by skyler817, Creative Commons license
http://www.katherinecowley.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Katherine-Cowley-Logo-2-1030x589.png00Katherine Cowleyhttp://www.katherinecowley.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Katherine-Cowley-Logo-2-1030x589.pngKatherine Cowley2015-04-02 07:50:022015-04-02 07:52:10Breastfeeding Mama, at the Tempe Community Writing Contest
It was a Sunday night. I’d spent 2 hours editing and cropping possible author photos, and I had 6 that I liked. And honestly, I hadn’t the least idea of which photo I should use–I was too close to the project, sick of staring at my own teeth.
So I decided to crowd source.
On Monday morning, I posted the following to Facebook. My husband reposted it to his page and to Twitter.
Responses poured in, and since I’d posted it as Public, plenty of people I’ve never met voted. And everyone had opinions. I compiled the results in an Excel file.
217 people voted. 64 people (29%) voted for more than one photo.
The final votes:
But despite the votes, I still wasn’t sure which photo to choose.
After all, I never said I would choose the photo that had the most votes. And photos 4 and 5 had a close number of votes, with some things making me lean towards photo 5 (several editors from a publishing house and someone who arranges author visits both put photo 5 down as their top choice). Also, it wasn’t the best poll from a scientific standpoint, as people could see what others had voted and it may have subconsciously impacted some people’s decision. (I intentionally didn’t do an official Facebook Poll, because then people could constantly see the final count, instead of just what the last few people had voted.)
In a helpful move, one of my friends gave me some pop culture advice.
He told me “Blue Steel.”
Oh, yes, from the film Zoolander. Is it really possible to choose the best Ben Stiller, especially since the photos are so drastically different?
Also, he sent me this amazing clip from the film Ten Things I Hate About You. You can skip to about 36 seconds in.
The real question, then, is if I wanted to be pensive or thoughtful.
As many people pointed out, different photos create different meanings, and impact the way people will interpret me as an author. But there was a diversity of interpretations for any given photo.
I decided to do a test and see what the photos looked like on the web.
I turned to Twitter, since I have a small audience and followers don’t get a notification when you switch your photo.
Photo 4 on Twitter:
And when it’s shown smaller:
Photo 5 on Twitter:
And when it’s shown smaller:
Both photos looked good on Twitter. But in the context of a social media site, I preferred Photo 4.
So despite the fact that I am going to make 47% of respondents unhappy, I’m going with Photo 4. However, I plan to use Photo 5 if I ever need an alternate photo.
My other photos are awesome too. For instance, the turquoise background photos look really good when they aren’t cropped into a headshot, so I will surely use them for something.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the Great Author Photo Debate of 2015!
http://www.katherinecowley.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Katherine-Cowley-Logo-2-1030x589.png00Katherine Cowleyhttp://www.katherinecowley.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Katherine-Cowley-Logo-2-1030x589.pngKatherine Cowley2015-03-03 09:17:472015-03-03 09:29:58The Great Author Photo Debate of 2015
The Essay’s New Home:
