These are the first writing reference books I bought, the Howdunit series from Writer’s Digest. I didn’t get the all at once as a group but over the course of my junior and senior years of high school. Some of these books are 20 years old! I can’t remember the first one I bought, possibly the Police Procedural one? Because I was such a huge fan of Law & Order and In the Heat of the Night. These books set me on the path of writing mysteries, and I still keep them close on the bookshelf behind my desk. I can’t imagine not having them close at hand, just in case I need them!
Preptober Day 12: NaNo Fuel
Coffee. Always coffee. I don’t need anything else.
Although, tea is also nice sometimes, especially if I’ve already had my coffee for the day. I’m very partial to the Twinnings Buttermint tea, with a little cream and sugar. I like sweet drinks.
My coffee drink of choice depends on where I’m writing. If I’m at home, I make an iced coffee with cream and maple syrup. If I’m at a cafe, it’s a latte with caramel syrup, iced or hot, depending on the time of year. I usually write at a Starbucks, and my favorite Starbucks drink is the Chestnut Praline latte they do in November and December. I love that drink so very much. It reminds me of a drink I used to get at a cafe near my apartment in Japan.
I don’t often snack while writing. It’s not unusual for me to forget about my stomach completely while I’m in the writing zone.
Preptober Day 11: Where I Write
My home office. Our house floorplan includes a little niche office, which is my own space to work and manage the house. When I’m at home and working, this is where I am, always.
However, I often find it extremely difficult to write at home. It’s too easy to get distracted by the cats or my daughter or the pile of dishes in the sink or the crazy mess on the dining table. I write a lot outside of the house, usually at a local Starbucks, especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays when my daughter is at her co-op class. It’s just easier for me to focus and get work done in a place where I know I can put my earbuds in and tune out the world without anyone disturbing me somehow.
Preptober Day 10: Inspiration
Inspiration finds me in several ways, but locations tend to inspire me the most. Often, it’s comes from the places I’ve lived in or traveled to, less from pictures of places I’ve never actually experienced. The Motosu Mysteries came into being while I was living in Japan, and many of the settings I have planned for that series are also some of my favorite places in Japan. I also have plans for a contemporary murder mystery series set in the city I currently live in, and I would love to work on a series - either historical or contemporary - set in St. Augustine, Florida where I went to college and lived for seven years. It’s a beautiful town with a lot of history, and I always feel inspired when I’m visiting there again.
The courtyard of Flagler College, formerly the Hotel Ponce de Leon. Someday, I’ll set a mystery here!
Preptober Day 8: Writing Music
I actually don’t like writing to music all that much! I prefer ambient sounds or background noise. I can write in a busy, noisy Starbucks without getting distracted at all. It’s how I used to write in college - I would go to Barnes & Noble with a pen and notebook, and I’d write for four hours. For a long time, I didn’t have a laptop or an iPod or anything else to turn off the B&N noise, so I just got used to it. And now I sometimes think I write better with all the background noise. When I do have my earbuds in, I’m usually listening to ambient noise channels on YouTube. And sometimes I’m not actually listening to anything, but having the earbuds in keeps random people from talking to me, which is a distraction, particularly at NaNoWriMo write-ins!
Preptober Day 6: Biggest Distractions
Family, all the time. The best kind of distraction to have!
I have a husband and a homeschooled 5-year old daughter (who will be six in November! I did not plan to have a NaNoWriMo baby, but she came three weeks early to make sure she didn’t miss it!), and being a stay-at-home mom takes up a lot of my time. I wouldn’t change this for anything; I love that I am able to stay home and homeschool my daughter, and I know how lucky I am to be able to do it.
But there are some days I don’t get any writing work done because I’m busy with housekeeping or teaching my daughter. I have to keep an eye on that kind of thing, that I’m not going multiple days without writing or otherwise working on a book. If I take a couple of days off from writing, it’s harder for me to get back into the flow. My schedule is a bit all over the place - each day is different from the one before! - which is why I use an hourly planner to know where my time is going each day. Some days, we’re constantly on the go, other days we’re at home taking care of housework. I plan my writing around the times I know I’m going to be busy with other things. It’s all about balance. Sometimes I look forward to a break from writing to spend time with the ones I love! Family time is important too!
Preptober Day 1: All About You
Preptober is upon us! It is time to prepare for the marathon of writing: National Novel Writing Month! Next month, so many writers around the world will be attempting to write 50,000 words in 30 days!
This is my favorite time of year. I love NaNoWriMo season. It’s been a part of my life for a very long time, and it has become a yearly tradition that I just can’t do without. I look forward to October every year, when I begin to plan out the story I’ll be working on in November.
My local ML (municipal liaison, the one tasked with wrangling the Wrimos of their given region) shared an Instagram challenge from author Rachel Bateman, who created it for her local region. I decided to take on the challenge too. I’ve been posting responses to the prompts on my Instagram, but I thought it might be nice to do it here too, since I’ve been neglecting this site since I went on vacation at the beginning of October.
Day #1 is All About You.
This will be my 17th NaNoWriMo. My first time was in 2003, when I was in college and one of my friends heard about it from one of our teachers and convinced a bunch of us to do it. I wrote 17,000 words, but it was the most I’d ever written on a story, and I was hooked. It's been a fall tradition ever since. I have written in a variety of genres, and I’ve even been a rebel a couple of times, but now I stick to mysteries, historical and contemporary. I also always start a new project, because I’ve found I’m more successful that way. This year, I'll be working on book 4 in an alternate history mystery series set in Japan in 1908.
When I’m not distracted by NaNoWriMo, I'm a stay-at-home mom who balances writing with homeschooling. I live in Texas, but my heart is in Japan, where I lived for three years and met and married my husband. We would love to live there again someday. I have one living daughter and one daughter who was born sleeping. I am going to self-publish my first book next summer, which is both exciting and terrifying and what this website is all about. Life is rarely dull, and I'm always curious what tomorrow will bring.
Introduction
I always have a hard time writing my own bio, and so I often wonder if other writers also have a hard time with it too. I’m already dreading the day, in the near future, when I will have to write an author’s bio for my books and my profiles on publishing platforms. I am not a very exciting person, and my bios will surely reflect that. I’m only sure of one thing: the part of my bio where it tells where I live and with whom. That’s something a lot of author bios include, usually at the end, so mine is going to have that too. Maybe at the beginning. I’m thinking I should start with it, since it’s the only thing I’m really certain of.
So, here it is: Sara Keefe lives in Texas with her husband, daughter, two cats Yuzu and Mirin, and memories of Japan.
Those are the basics. I like it when bios reveal pet names. Family members names are too personal, but pet names are more vague, and they can also tell you something about their people. For example, our pets have Japanese food names, because we love Japan and Japanese food.
My husband and I met in Japan. Neither of us are Japanese but American. I was born in Florida, he was born in Massachusetts. It is a guarantee that we never would have met if not for both Japan and Dungeons & Dragons. We met at a D&D game in Japan. I had been in the country four months. He had been there much longer, on his second or third period of residence (I can’t remember which, he’s ten years older and so has more history to keep track of). I lived in Japan a total of three years, my husband a total of ten. We returned to America because our eldest daughter was stillborn, and we wanted to be closer to our families while we grieved. We would love to live in Japan again someday. We miss it greatly.
I taught English in Japan (as did my husband, but this is not his bio). My degree is in English, with minors in Creative Writing and Psychology. I tried teaching in America and didn’t enjoy it. My first job in Japan was the best job I have ever had. My second job was not as great, but it still beat the jobs I’d had in America. My work history is not very interesting. Degrees in English don’t get you very far if you stop with a Bachelor’s. If I could go back and do it over again, I would double-major in English and History, but that probably would not have helped my career options that much.
Right now, my jobs are homeschooling and writing. I enjoy both, but I wish that writing could be my full-time job. I will not be homeschooling forever, so maybe I’ll be a full-time writer in the future. In the meantime, I carve out writing time when I am not teaching or otherwise caring for my daughter.
But this year, I decided that I can’t wait for homeschooling to be over to follow my dreams. I keep putting it off, but I’m getting impatient. I want to do it right now. Or, at least, sooner than ten years from now. I have always wanted to be a published author, so I’ve spent this year researching my options, and figuring out how I want to get it done. I like being in control, and I like my independence, and I write alternate history mysteries set in Japan in 1907, which is kind of niche. So self-publishing it is.
A year from now, I will hold my first book in my hands. I have a long way to go to get to that moment. This website is a step in that direction. This blog will be a chronicle of sorts. I hope you’ll join me.