KATHRYN R. BIEL: AUTHOR

I just got back from RWA 2017. For those of you not in my writing world, RWA is the Romance Writers of America, and this was their national conference, held in Orlando, FL. But to me, RWA stands for Really Wicked Awesome. Why was this week so great? So. Many. Reasons. First of all, I got to go and hang with my posse. My inner circle. My writing peeps who I talk with every day online, who are with me every step of the way, and I with them. It's extra special being able to actually see them, hang out with them, brainstorm with them, and laugh until you cry with them. These are my friends  and seeing them for four days a year isn't nearly enough. Melissa Baldwin , Becky Monson , and me at the RITA Awards Taking the boat to Disney Springs. It's the only Disney experience I had the whole time because I was too busy learning. Last day, so sad. :-( Next, I got to meet in person people in my outer writing circle. People I've "known" online for y...

It's November again (how did that  happen?), which means it's National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. That breaks down to 1,667 words a day. It doesn't sound like much but it is. It takes a lot of focus and dedication to get the words in every day. I sort of hate NaNo. I sort of love NaNo. What I hate is the pressure. Sometimes (like this year), I'm struggling to get the words down (I want to say to get the words on paper, but since I write on a computer, that's not exactly true). I fell behind on November 3. Usually I'm ahead in the counts at least until the second week. I get so far ahead I can even skip writing for a day. Not this year. I made up some ground yesterday, but I still am 500 words behind, not to mention the additional 1,667 I owe for today. What I love is that I write. I've been in a writing slump since I finished Made for Me . That was the end of July. So, yeah, I need motivation to write. Plus...

I know I've woefully abandoned this blog this summer. But listen--I've got good reasons. First, and least important, I was reading. Reading is important for me because well, I love it. I started reading the Outlander  series. I'm two and a half books in. I'm reading the hardcover versions and they do require significant upper body strength. For those of you not familiar, each book is 700-800 pages, so in hardcover, it's quite the heft. The real reason I ignored blogging--I was writing! After hemming and hawing and overall procrastinating since February, I finally set a goal and buckled down to finish my seventh full-length novel, Made for Me . This time last year, I was trying to write Live for This  when I became distracted with the idea of writing a Christmas novella. I'd had the idea for quite a while, so with the timing being right, I wrote Completions and Connections: A Romantic Holiday Novella . It's a cute little story, and came out exactly how ...