It’s that time of year again, time to look back at my year of reading. Last year, I read 78 books. This year? 81! You can scan the covers, or peruse the full list below. What were some of your favorite reads of 2017? Good ol’ fiction: The River at Night by Erica Ferencik The — Read More
Author: Kim Hooper
While you were sleeping: A letter to my daughter
Dear Mya, You’re napping in your swing, finally. Usually by the time we get you to nap, you need to eat again. I have 10 minutes to write this before the inevitable hunger cry commences. It’s been a rough few days. We’ve all had a cold. I got my first round of edits for Cherry — Read More
Women writing men
My next novel, Cherry Blossoms, has a male narrator. I didn’t plan to write a story with a man’s voice; it just came to me that way. This story, like most of my stories, started with one line: “I have eight months to live.” And the character saying that line in my head just happened — Read More
Book #2 is coming!
I am excited to announce that my second novel will be published by Turner Publishing around this time next year! The book is titled Cherry Blossoms. I started it back in 2009, abandoned it for years, and finished it as part of my 100-day writing challenge a few months ago. I have always loved this story — Read More
Brave new world
I have been meaning to write a post to let you know that I had my baby but having a baby doesn’t allow much time for things like writing blog posts. At the moment, she is in the swing next to me, awake but content. I am learning to take advantage of these moments. Her — Read More
Motherhood and writing
I’m 37 weeks pregnant, so I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on this subject. How will being a mom affect my writing? I know I will have way less time and will need to learn to maximize free moments even more than I do now. But, beyond schedule and logistics, will the stories I’m drawn — Read More
100-day writing challenge: Complete
Annnnd, just like that, 100 days have passed. When I started this thing, my intention was to write every single day for 100 days. After all, that’s what I did when I undertook this challenge back in 2013. This time, I wasn’t as strict. I used the challenge more to motivate me to stick to — Read More
The daunting first draft
One of the goals of my 100-day writing challenge has been to finish the first draft of a novel I started and abandoned years ago. This project is a bit different than most first-draft-projects because I’m not starting with the blank page; instead, I’m wading through old work and editing, cutting, adding as appropriate. Still, the feelings — Read More
Day 60 of the 100-day writing challenge
I meant to do a halfway-there post on my 100-day writing challenge, but I forgot. So, here I am, 10 days late, to say it’s going well. The last time I did a challenge like this, I was very neurotic about writing every single day (since that was, after all, the point of the whole — Read More
The psychology of writer’s block
Recently, I read this Writer Unboxed piece by Julianna Baggott that asks, “Is writer’s block a form of self-protection?” I’m always intrigued by theories that writer’s block is something other than laziness (because that’s what the mean “YOU MUST WRITE” voice in my head tells me it is). Baggott suggests that writer’s block isn’t “failure.” — Read More