Wow!   I’ve been offered a chance to interview the fabulous Kimberly Kincaid, and she promised to tell me all her secrets – she was able in just a few short years to go from unpublished to agented, indie-pubbed and is expecting her first SERIES to debut this fall!  And while you’re waiting, her current title, Drawing the Line is available NOW.  

So, let’s welcome our Mermaid guest for today with a cool, tall frothy drink.  We’ll even toss some petals into the lagoon for some aromatherapy.  Ready, Kimberly?

1. Please share you life story and how/when you decided to be a writer. Coming right out of the gate with the hard questions! (takes long sip of frothy drink) I’m a wife and mom of three girls, and some of my former jobs include yoga instructor, English teacher, and working in a bagel bakery. I write full-time now and it’s my dream job. I love every second– even the ones where I’m thunking my head on my desk!

2. These are Indie titles, right? What prompted you to choose the Indie route? Pros and cons? I’m a bit of an anomaly in that I do both. The “line” novellas are published through Curtis Brown Digital, which is my agency’s digital imprint. We use Amazon’s self-pubbing format. The short answer is that I wrote the stories because I could– I had time in my schedule in between print projects for Kensington and my agent and editor thought it would be a great way to launch my career. I love learning the ins and outs of the industry from this side, but it’s a lot of time-consuming work. You get a very quick education the first time around! But it’s been successful for me, and of course I’m thrilled to get my work into the hands of readers. 

3. Police procedure and cooking. It’s fascinating. It’s sexy. It’s When Worlds Collide.  Discuss. Ahhh, police procedure! I was lucky to have a contact for the technical stuff, and he was very patient in answering my questions. The cooking part was a lot easier for me, since all my books incorporate food. But cops and chefs are both very intense, very “Alpha” type people most of the time. Putting those strong personalities together just made sense in my head. Plus, when the sparks fly…they *really* fly!

We mermaids have had some pretty fun writing retreats in our time. We’ve stayed extra days after the WRW retreat in Westminster, MD. We also got derailed by Hurricane Sandy at a beach house in Ocean City. Each retreat (while it lasted) yielded writing time that was focused, productive. And uninterrupted.

The other day, I was thinking I could use a writing retreat right about now. I’m closing in on “The End” on my WIP, and all I need is a little push to get there. Sadly, there wasn’t one that was magically on the schedule. So I thought: why not have one of my very own?

Here’s how I’m doing it:

1. Clear my schedule. I talked to the important people in my life. Figured out which responsibilities I could get out of with a little juggling. The non-negotiable items I marked in my calendar. The rest of the time I’m reserving for writing.

2. Find a place to go. You don’t have to go out of town to do a writing retreat. In fact, I’m not, on account of my non-negotiable responsibilities. But while I will be sleeping in my own bed at night, I think a change of scenery is definitely important for my mind-set. I decided to go to my local library, from opening to closing.

3. Make a commitment to say “no.” Something will come up during the retreat time. It always does. But whatever it is, I’m going to say “no.” I’ve already determined which things are non-negotiable. Everything else can wait until after the retreat.

4. Prepare. I am packing plenty of snacks, water, warm clothes, charger, notes, iPhone, chapstick. Everything I could possibly need to be comfortable. I’m also going to get plenty of sleep at night, so that there’s no physical excuse (hungry, cold, tired) to stop me from getting the words on the page.

And that’s it! I did a test run of my “writing retreat” yesterday, with fantastic results. The official retreat is this week. Wish me luck!

What about you? Have you ever been to a writing retreat, or created one of your very own? Where did you go, and how much did you get accomplished?

Oh, and if I’m not responding to blog comments? You know where I am and what I’m doing. 🙂

Alethea Mermaid

by Alethea, Kimberly, and Pintip Mermaid

Alethea: Happy Tuesday, everyone, and welcome to Day Two of our Waterworld Mermaid Second Blogoversary Week Celebration!  (We should probably have come up with something a lot simpler than that.)

Today we’re kicking things off with our YA Mermaids: Kimberly MacCarron, Pintip Dunn, and MOI.

Interestingly enough, it was Kimberly who planted this whole “group blog” seed in my head during the Sara Megibow talk during that original WRW Retreat back in 2011.

Sara was telling all the authors in the audience that they should have a blog, because if she read as far as page 10 of a manuscript, she’d Google the author. Kim, sitting next to me, mumbled some snide comment under her breath about how she didn’t have time for such nonsense.

Either directly before or directly after that, she’d asked for a show of hands from published authors, and then grilled me about being a member of the fashionable w clubs that were popping up on the internet, like the Apocalypsies and #2K12. I was forced to admit, in front of everyone, that I had applied to be in both of those groups, and neither of them wanted me.

I suppose my brain jumped to the next possible conclusion…which was: If no one wanted me in their Super Sekrit Club, then I’d just make one of my own!

Pintip Mermaid

Pintip: One of my favorite things about that first retreat was the genre table during the Saturday luncheon. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well, it was. Each round table was labeled “Historical,” “Romantic Suspense,” “Paranormal,” etc., and you just sat wherever you wanted.

I, of course, made a beeline for the YA table, where I was lucky enough to sit with Kim and Tara Kennedy. I’d met them both earlier that weekend, but this was the first time I realized they wrote in the same genre as me. In order to appreciate what a big deal this was, you have to understand that I’d never spoken to another YA writer before. Ever. In fact, before going to that retreat, I barely knew any writers, period. It was such an amazing feeling to connect with other people who not only had my same crazy passion for the written word — but who also loved the same stories I did!

In so many ways, that first retreat changed my writing life. Without the encouragement I’d received, I may not have entered any RWA chapter contests. Without entering those contests, I may not have met my agent. Moreover, that first retreat introduced me to so many fantastic writers, many of whom I am now fortunate enough to call my dear friends.

As writers, we build our stories around turning points. I can say without an ounce of exaggeration that the 2011 WRW retreat was a turning point in my writing career. Fingers crossed for a happy ending!

Kimberly: Well, it kind of sucks to go last because Alethea and Pintip managed to steal all the good stuff.  J What I can add is that YA—Young Adult—is a strange beast.  Many think of it as one genre, but it’s not.  It crosses just about every genre, but it’s written, produced or marketed to adolescents or young adults.  As long as the

protagonist is of that age, it’s a young adult.  Alethea writes beautiful books based on fairy tales.  Pintip writes futuristic stories about the choices

Kimberly Mermaid

that define teens. 

I write contemporary stories with loads and loads of romance. They sound completely different, and yet there’s a common thread that unites them.  They are coming-of-age stories told about young adults who are trying to discover and understand who they are.

The thing I love most about YA is that magical element that seems to appear in all of them.  Whether we’re talking about frog princes, or other planets, or falling in love…there’s magic.  Our teen years are filled with magic in many ways.  There are possibilities every day.

When I’m not writing YA, I’m reading it, and at first I wondered what that meant. I read them because I still believe in the magic, in the wonder, in the possibilities.  That’s why I read it, and that’s why I write it.  I love getting lost in a book, but I especially love getting lost in the story.

I’m not sure why everyone else reads and writes YA.  But I’d love to know.

Why do you like YA?

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