Updates Archives - Katherine Cowley

Write with Jane Austen: Cover Reveal

February 17, 2025/0 Comments/in Updates, Write with Jane Austen, Writing Lesson/by Katherine Cowley

Even if you’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of hours writing a book, the book always feels more real once you have a cover. That’s definitely the case for my upcoming nonfiction work, Write with Jane Austen: Masterclasses with the Master Storyteller.

I’m excited to show the cover for the book, but first, I wanted to tell you a little about the process, behind the scenes.

When my Mary Bennet book covers were being designed, the publisher had me fill out an “Art Fact Sheet” with information about the book. The head designer for the publisher then worked directly with the book’s cover designer. I received cover mockups (drafts, of a sort), and then I gave my feedback to the head designer, who conveyed it to the cover designer.

This time, the process was similar, but different.

Several months ago, I contacted a dream designer and asked if she would be willing to design the cover for my upcoming book.

She said yes.

Then, one of the first things we did was we got on a video call, and we looked at dozens of covers for nonfiction books related to Jane Austen, and nonfiction writing books. The designer asked for my thoughts on which covers I loved and why, and which ones didn’t work for me.

And then, she went to work. She designed three amazing covers, and I got to choose my favorite, which she then refined. And which you now get to see.

The cover reveal for Write with Jane Austen: Masterclasses with the Master Storyteller

Isn’t it gorgeous?

I love the floral wallpaper look, which bridges both Regency and modern styles. I love the font, I love the watercolor paper. I love the colors. Basically, I love everything about the cover, and I hope you like it too.

Here’s a digital rendering of what it will probably look like in 3D, on a physical book:

A 3D rendering of the book Write with Jane Austen: Masterclasses with the Master Storyteller

If you want to make sure to be the first to know when the project goes live, click the “Notify me on launch” button on the Kickstarter page. I really appreciate those who have already done so–publishing a book is always a little (or a lot) scary, and so your support and encouragement means a lot to me.

If you missed the original news about the book and want more details, here’s a blog post I wrote about it.

The Year of the Pivot: 2024, A Writing Year in Review

December 31, 2024/0 Comments/in Updates, Year in Review/by Katherine Cowley

It’s the final day of 2024, which means it’s time for my annual Writing Year in Review post—highlights, lowlights, charts, and insights into my writing process. And at the end of the post, there’s an announcement about a new book I have coming out next year!!!

First, let’s look at how many hours I spent writing in 2024:

A chart showing the number of hours Katherine spent writing per month in 2024. January: 58. February: 55. March: 54. April: 60. May: 61. June: 41. July: 22. August 53. September: 92. October: 69. November: 84. December: 62.

(Note: I use Toggl to track my time—if you’d like to learn more, I wrote a post about how and why I use a time tracker for writing.)

As you can see, July was a rather low month at 22 hours—however, I did spend three weeks in Europe (I went to Paris for the first time, and I visited my parents in Vienna). The highest month was September, where I felt the back-to-school energy (despite not currently being a student/teacher). And the total for the year was:

711 hours writing

That’s fewer yearly hours than in recent years, but it’s been a tricky full year on many fronts, and it’s still a respectable showing.

And now, you ask, how did I spend my time?

Here’s a chart of how many hours I spent on each writing project over the course of the year:

A few insights into this chart:

Development – this is an umbrella I use to include critiquing other people’s writing, attending my writing group, participating in writing conferences, learning about writing craft, and networking.

Volunteer work – I’m on the board of directors for a writing nonprofit. It’s nice to do a little to give back to the writing community, and this year I guest edited the Holiday Lit Blitz.

Short stories – short stories are great to stretch my writing muscles, and some stories just belong in a short form. I also cheated this year and included a personal essay in this category, which leads to one of this year’s highlights:

A personal essay I wrote was nominated for a Pushcart Prize!

Red, blue, and yellow book cover which reads

Teaching writing – I taught a two-week writing class for the Lifelong Learning program at Kellogg Community College, and it was delightful. I’ll be teaching a class in March about writing adaptations and retellings, so if you live in West Michigan, watch for when their Spring catalogue drops.

Regency mystery novel – I’ve played a little with a new novel, that will likely be one of my major focuses for 2025.

One thing that didn’t end up on this chart…I gave up my writing office. Due to a variety of circumstances, one of my kids needed it as a bedroom. As I moved out of the space and into the edge of a different room, I definitely felt the loss. It’s hard not to read into the symbolism of giving up your creative space.

However, I learned something new last week: when Frank Lloyd Wright lived in Oak Park, he gave up his architecture studio so his kids could have a bedroom. A few years later he ended up designing and building an incredible new studio. So I’m sure good writing spaces will again be in my future.

Kathy outside a sign for the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Oak Park

Me outside of the Frank Lloyd Wright house

Part of Frank Lloyd Wright's new studio -- there's an octagon dome roof, chain supports, and lots of light.

A small part of Frank Lloyd Wright’s new studio in Oak Park

An_architecture_cabinet_thats_also_a_partial_column_20

An architecture cabinet that’s also a partial column. Also, it can move.

And now, we come to the title of this blog post…

The Year of the Pivot

In the middle of 2024, I had a bit of a writing crisis. My family would argue that calling it “a bit of a crisis” is a gross understatement. My husband bought me a pot of succulents for my desk, which is a true indication of the gravity of the situation.

During the first half of the year, I spent 165 hours revising an 1870s mystery novel, bringing the three-year total for the book to 800 hours.

It’s doing a lot of cool things, but it’s a really tricky, complicated book. Due to a variety of factors, I realized that I needed to step away from the project. (As a note: I will be coming back to this book, but it may be a year or two before I figure out how to make it work. Fortunately, books are like soup—time stewing is almost always beneficial for enhancing the flavors and depth. I spent years thinking about The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet before writing it, and it really helped me figure out Mary’s character.)

Fortunately, about two weeks before I stepped away from the book, I had already decided on an Exciting New Book that I wanted to write/finish.

Pivoting was difficult, but it was also exhilarating. The new project—which for the moment, we’re still calling the Exciting New Book—brought me so much joy.

I ended up spending 213 hours on the Exciting New Book. And the book will actually be coming out in 2025.

It was a year of ups and downs, with lots of twists and turns, but it’s ending on a high note. Thanks for joining me on my writing journey, and Happy New Year!

And if you’d like a little more details, my new book is titled Write with Jane Austen: Masterclasses from the Master Storyteller.

And you can read more about this new book in this post:

An intriguing snippet which has Jane Austen's portrait and a mysterious gray box with the words, "Cover Coming Soon"

New Book: Write with Jane Austen

December 31, 2024/1 Comment/in Jane Austen Writing Lessons, Updates, Write with Jane Austen/by Katherine Cowley

Write with Jane Austen: Masterclasses with the Master Storyteller. The image also contains a mysterious gray box with the words "Cover Coming Soon," and a picture of Jane Austen

2025 is Jane Austen’s 250^th birthday, and to celebrate, I am releasing a book titled Write with Jane Austen: Masterclasses with the Master Storyteller.

A Description of the Book

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a writer wishes to write well, she should learn from the very best of writers. In other words, she should study with Jane Austen.

Write with Jane Austen is the definitive guide on how to improve your writing. Its lessons and examples draw from Austen’s six published novels and from her unpublished works. This book will help you craft a character’s internal and external journeys, create effective antagonists and obstacles, construct compelling relationships, capture a setting without disrupting the forward movement of the narrative, improve your style, and compose dialogue which brings the characters and the story to life. Each chapter contains writing exercises which will help you internalize and apply these principles.

Whether you write romance, women’s fiction, historical fiction, mystery, or any other genre, this book will enable you to emulate Jane Austen’s proven techniques and improve your storytelling. This guide will also increase any reader’s appreciation for Austen’s craft.

Background on the Book

From 2020 to 2022, I wrote a blog titled Jane Austen Writing Lessons. For each post, I took a writing topic (for instance, writing sympathetic characters) and explored principles and techniques that could be learned from Jane Austen’s six published novels.

Jane Austen Writing Lessons. With an image of the original cover page of Pride and Prejudice; a color image of Jane Austen; an image of tea and pastries with an open book, and an early cover of Sense and Sensiblity.

I had a fabulous time writing about sixty-five posts, and the blog was recognized by The Write Life as “one of the best websites for writers in 2021.” A number of readers and friends encouraged me to turn the blog into a book. I played with the idea, but I was working on other projects, so I never pursued it.

Fast forward to the summer of 2024. I realized that this coming year—2025—is Jane Austen’s 250^th birthday. And I decided that this was the next project of my heart: to create a book on creative writing through the lens of Jane Austen’s works.

And so I went to work.

I didn’t want the book to read as a series of blog posts—I wanted beautiful chapter arcs. I ended up scrapping about 50,000 words from my blog. Delete. Delete. Delete.

There were also a number of new chapters and sections I wanted to write. And write I did. I added chapters on relationships, rising action, the climax, style, and more. The book is over 50% brand new material that never appeared on my blog, and the chapters taken from the blog have been heavily revised.

I still have a bit more editing to do, and then the book will be copy edited and proofread, but it won’t be long until I can send the book out into the world.

**Crowdfunding Write with Jane Austen on Kickstarter**

I am really excited to release Write with Jane Austen in an interactive way, through Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a crowdfunding website designed exclusively for creative projects. It has been used extensively by both new and established authors, including bestselling names like Brandon Sanderson.

I’m using Kickstarter because:

It’s a great platform to run preorders for books.
It’s interactive and exciting—I’ve personally backed 19 projects on Kickstarter, and as a reader, I love knowing that I can help bring a project to life. I also love the comments section (Kickstarter is the only place where it’s fun to read the comments!), the in-process updates from the creator, and the feeling of community.
Running a Kickstarter will help cover the production costs for the book (i.e. cover, professional editing, etc.)
Releasing a book on Kickstarter allows my loyal readers, friends, and fans to get a copy of the book months before it’s available to everyone else.
Kickstarter allows me to offer other things in addition to the book—like writing workshops and a special edition workbook. (I will tell you more about these in the near future!)

The Kickstarter for the project will go live in March/April—to be the very first to know when it does, visit the book’s pre-launch page and click “Notify me on launch.”

The Pre-Launch Page for Write with Jane Austen

Final Thoughts

I’m really excited to share this book with the world. Reading Jane Austen has changed my life for the better, and studying her craft in depth has transformed my writing. She truly is the master storyteller.

Don’t Miss Important Updates

To make sure you don’t miss important news and updates, sign up for one or both of my newsletters.

My regular newsletter contains information about my books, events, giveaways, and my reading recommendations. It will include some updates on the Write with Jane Austen book.

The Write with Jane Austen newslettter will include more updates on the book, exclusive tidbits, and mini-writing lessons to tide you over until the book is available.

2023, A Writing Year in Review: Bulbs and Beavers (and Pie!)

December 27, 2023/0 Comments/in Updates, Year in Review/by Katherine Cowley

2023: A Writing Year in Review. With a picture of a tree, barely standing as it has been gnawed by a beaver, and tulips next to a mailbox.

Last year, in 2022, I had two novels and two short stories published, wore fancy dresses and attended two awards ceremonies, ran a successful Kickstarter for a nonprofit, spent 937 hours writing, and had what is, for writing, a rather glamorous year.

This year was very different.

A hipster writer. He looks at you instead of his page. He might be pensive, but he might be sadness. Perhaps writing requires a certain weight of sadness, at least in 2023.

Above: Peak 2023 writing energy. Deposit photos says he is “hipster.” If I owned that hat, maybe I would be hipster too.

In 2023, I had no books published. I attended no award ceremonies. I spent 880 hours writing (which is lower than the amount spent in 2020, 2021, and 2022). I hit a point in the revisions process where my confidence (as a writer) decided to indulge in clichés and completely shatter, like a Corelle soup bowl on the kitchen floor, shards of glass scattering across two full rooms. (Corelle is made of tempered glass, so it’s not supposed to break easily, but in my house, we’ve broken at least four bowls and plates this year.)

Yet right now, as I look back on another year of writing, I feel good about 2023.

Hours Spent Writing Per Month in 2023, by Katherine Cowley. January: 68. February: 59. March: 82. April: 104. May: 59. June: 85. July: 67. August: 82. September: 68. October: 71. November: 83. December: 50.

This year of writing was like planting bulbs in the fall with the hope that they’ll come up in the spring. Yes, despite the spicy hot pepper-based deer repellant, the deer might still eat all of them, but chances are, next year I’ll have tulips.

A small garden bed of brightly colored tulips.

A picture of my tulips from this spring. Unlike in 2022, when the deer ate all my tulips a few days before they blossomed, in 2023 my tulips survived so they could act as a positive metaphor.

This year of writing was also like a beaver, gnawing on trees. There are lots of trees to gnaw on. There’s a lodge to maintain. There’s pesky, flowing water that must be stopped. Sometimes people put up metal netting so you can’t get to the best trees. Sometimes you take down a whole tree at once, but most of the time, that’s not possible. So you start on a few trees and make some progress, knowing that you’ll have time to do the rest later.

A tree in a marshy area of a pond. It has been gnawed on on both sides by a beaver, yet somehow it stays standing.

1 2 3

These are pictures that I took that show the efforts of the local beavers at the Asylum Lake Nature Preserve in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Every few months, I check on the beavers’ progress.

What trees did I gnaw on this year? Well, there’s a chart for that.

The Delicious Pie Chart of Writing 2023 Edition - Katherine Cowley

I love charts, I love pie, and I love writing. This collision of all three interests was meant to be.

And now, in classic bar graph form:

Hours Spent Per Writing Project in 2023. New Murder Mystery: 437. Development: 200. Website, etc.: 97. Personal Writing: 50. Short Stories and Essays: 30. Writing Nonprofit: 26. Translations: 18. Submissions: 17. Other Projects: 5.

And, because I like writing, some written details for a few of the categories:

New Murder Mystery (437 hours)

These 437 hours are on top of the 227 hours I spent on this book last year, bringing the total up to 664. This is the most research-intensive, complicated, and challenging book I’ve written. It’s also been like making soup—the components have needed time to stew together, so the flavors develop properly.

Development (200 hours)

Conferences: Malice Domestic and the Midwest Mystery Conference
Critiquing and writing group
Networking
Writing craft and mystery genre research
Accounting, taxes, and business stuff
Planning and considering goals

Website, etc. (97 hours)

Website, newsletters, blog posts, and a few book events! My most popular blog post for the year was on Mary Bennet and Mr. Collins.

Submissions (17 hours)

Most of this time was spent applying to an art residency. I didn’t get selected, but I was on the short list, and now I have a very solid concept for a future book that I plan to write.

Looking to 2024

Me with my 2024 planner, which matches my sweater. Maybe I am hipster after all.

I often have a 2-year writing plan, with all my upcoming projects figured out. I don’t right now, and that’s both terrifying and liberating.

I do know that I’ll need to do more revisions on my current mystery novel. I want to write some short stories, and spend a few weeks focusing on reading and doing other things to refill my creative well. I suspect I will start a new book. Will that be a sequel to my current novel or to Mary Bennet? Or something entirely new? Only time will tell.

I Just Bought My First Barbie + My Thoughts on the Barbie Movie

July 23, 2023/0 Comments/in Arts, Reviews, Updates/by Katherine Cowley

This week, I–a thirty-something year old woman–bought my very first Barbie doll.

I never owned a single Barbie when I was a child. Yet I desperately wanted one. I loved going over to friends’ houses and playing with Barbie dolls, dream houses, and pink cars.

I never asked for a Barbie because I assumed that my parents would be opposed to them and everything Barbie stood for (a sexualized, unattainable, and perhaps undesirable version of reality–clearly they wouldn’t that want that).

Years later, one of my younger sisters had Barbies, and I realized that I should have asked. Maybe a Barbie would have been outside of my family’s budget, but maybe it would have become that coveted Christmas present.

Fast-forward to myself as an adult, and my daughters own dozens of Barbie dolls, several Chelsea dolls, and a few pets. And, lest I forget, a single Ken doll. I have bought Barbies for them and Barbies for birthday presents, as if I am trying to make up for lost time. And I’ve spent many hours playing Barbies with my children. One of my youngest’s favorite versions involves designating half of the Barbies as villains and often includes kidnapping, tying Barbies up with ropes, and all manner of treachery and shenanigans.

Then came the Barbie movie. Not those animated movies that my daughters used to watch that I find supremely annoying, but THE 2023 Barbie movie.

I knew, from the moment the first Barbie teaser trailer dropped, that I would love the Barbie film. After all, 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of my favorite films, and if a director can manage to do a perfect homage, remaking every shot but with baby dolls, then I’m on board for the ride. (I’ll spare you the 1000-word analysis of the opening sequence of 2001…but know that this analysis is ever in my heart.)

Earlier this week, I was feeling very prepared for the Barbie movie:

Group of friends to go with? Check.
Tickets to opening night? Check.
Outfit? Check. (Matching Barbie shirts with customized “This Barbie is…” statements on the back.)

But I wanted a Margot Robbie Barbie doll. My internal voices, the same voices that led me to not ask for a Barbie, told me:

I don’t need a Barbie doll
I’m an adult–clearly I don’t need a Barbie doll
This is a waste of money
I’m going overboard for this movie, when I’m not even a Barbie superfan

I decided not to listen to the voices. I bought the Barbie doll.

And then I brought my very own Barbie–my very first Barbie–with me to the movie.

The showing was absolutely packed, mostly with women, but also with men and children. And the film was a delight. It was a perfect mix of comedy, cultural references, and simultaneous lighthearted embracing and mocking of fandom and society, mixed with touching, heartfelt moments.

One of the things I’ve struggled with throughout my adult life is a feeling of internal conflict. Of wanting to be many things, but feeling like my wants and desires don’t match up with all the many versions of what the different cultural, social, religious, and family groups I am a part of think I should be. It’s something I’ve tried to work through with therapists, but almost always I feel this internal tension, this sense that I’m not enough, this almost-wish that I could just happily fit into one of the roles that has been prescribed for me, and somehow just feel happy and content in this role. Could I just not want more? Could I just not want something different? Wouldn’t life be better that way?

This movie–Barbie’s journey, Ken’s journey, Gloria’s journey, Sasha’s journey–made me feel less alone. It made me feel like maybe I’m not the only one struggling with this. In fact, this is something everyone faces–especially women. Like Barbie, I can be who I want to be. Like Barbie, I can take on many roles. Like Barbie, there will be challenges and conflict, and the path won’t always be clear. But I can keep trying.

I have no regrets about buying myself a Barbie doll.

Archive for category: Updates