Category: fantasy
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Discovering eBird
All the true birders out there are going to say, “It’s about time you got with the program!” And they’re right. It’s been a couple years since a friend and colleague introduced me to eBird, the wonderful app developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I’m not sure how long eBird has been around, but…
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Undine – and where our stories come from
Saturday I attended a meeting of the Heartland Authors Guild, which goes by the wonderful acronym HAG. We did a flash fiction workshop including an exercise based on sensory prompts. Prompts were given to us by chance – drawn from a deck of cards. Mine read as follows: the sound of a garden hose What…
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Casting Away the Gifts
It’s been a month since I said good-bye to my friends at Virginia Beach, happy yet sad as we embraced each other in the bittersweet end to our annual gathering of creativity, womanly power, and meaningful companionship. I always come away from that week with a sense of renewal and at least one important lesson…
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Daughter of Aithne wins the OZMA Award
I’m very excited to report that Daughter of Aithne, Book Three of The Silver Web, has received the 2017 OZMA Award for fantasy fiction! A division of Chanticleer’s International Book Awards, the OZMA Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works of fantasy. Winners were announced last weekend at Chanticleer’s annual authors conference in Bellingham, Washington. It was a…
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Farewell, 2017
Once in a great while, a calendar year comes with a singular message; a lesson that seems to start on or near January 1st and come full circle by the end of December. If I were to articulate the big lesson of the last 365 days, it would be this: We must work hard to…
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Publishers Weekly reviews Daughter of Aithne
I’m very excited to report that this week’s edition of Publishers Weekly includes a review of Daughter of Aithne! The review caught me a little by surprise. I’d submitted the novel at the beginning of 2017 using BookLife, the independent author platform managed by Publishers Weekly. My hope was to score a PW review in…
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Season of Thanksgiving
Well, when I said I was going to check out for a while, I meant it! Last time I posted, the trees Kansas City were just beginning to turn. Now, the holidays are upon us! It’s been an extraordinary year, on all levels. I feel at once emptied out and renewed – as if the…
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Are we listening yet?
The devastating impact of Harvey has brought into sharp relief, once again, the lottery game we are playing with our planet. As Texas confronts catastrophic flooding, another tragedy unfolds in India: more than 1200 people are reported dead in the wake of the worst monsoon in 15 years. This on the heels of record summer…
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Independence Revisited
One year ago this week, I traveled to Costa Rica to sign my divorce papers. Today, I can reaffirm the old saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Because this thing nearly killed me. And now, I feel stronger for it. The years leading up to the divorce and the months following have been…
K. R. Gastreich, Author 