Kate Rivet

Hello everyone!

This is just a quick update for something near and dear to my heart (as the title of this post would indicate!).  As November approaches, the NaNoWriMo insanity is starting to get closer, and I wanted to post a quick link to my Classy.org donation page for NaNo.  NaNoWriMo, if you didn’t know, is a non-profit organization.  It’s not just November where they’re active — they do many different things throughout the year.  One facet, which I find SO important, is the literacy outreach work that they do.  I may be ten years removed from high school, but I do remember those years, as well as the ones before it.  As a creative kid, I always needed an outlet for my ideas.  In middle school, I was extremely active with the literary magazines, as well as the school newspaper.  I was a bit busier in high school with the band and other activities, but you’d better bet that I was writing short stories and webzine articles and all kinds of things on my own then.  If I hadn’t had a creative outlet or people encouraging me, then I would’ve been a different person today.  We’re now living a time where schools are lacking funding, and they’re starting to cut arts programs first.  To me, this is entirely unacceptable.  My mother is a teacher herself, and I can speak for the fact that many of her teacher friends in the arts are finding it hard to get funds, and are supplementing their projects with their own money.  One of my mom’s friends, who’s a librarian, found her position cut this year.  I was AGHAST when I heard this!  I know school libraries aren’t entirely what they were when I was young — I mean, there’s no flipping through the card catalogue to search for books using the Dewey decimal system (thank goodness!), but the librarians who worked in my schools were always such an invaluable part of helping me create and encouraging me to continue to read.

I know that I have friends whose kids just aren’t as into reading as we were back in the pre-iPad/iPhone/electronics days, but I do still think that kids need the exposure to these things, as well as the encouragement to create their own works.  This is exactly why I’m such a big supporter of NaNo’s community outreach.  As you can tell if you check out my reading list page here, I’m also a giant fan of reading, even to this very day.  So far, I’ve read over 150 books alone just in 2015, and I’m not done yet!  If others aren’t encouraged to read, then where will we get new, fresh voices from?

To wrap this post up, I’m going to post the link to my Classy page.  If you’ve got anything to spare at all, from one dollar to one hundred dollars — WHATEVER the amount, please consider donating something to help support NaNoWriMo and their amazing work.  I’ve met a lot of people over the past few years doing NaNo, and I know it’s left an important mark on all of our lives.  Let’s help ensure that the future will continue to have lots of different literary voices!

Here is my Classy link, and feel free to share it with anyone you know who may also want to donate to a great cause — and thank you in advance! — Classy.org/KateRivet

Until next time,
Kate

Hey everyone!

Ever taken a well-deserved break from something and found it hard to get back into the saddle again?  That’s where I’m at right now!  I’ve written SO many books back to back at this point now that when I finished Living for Adventure, I decided that I was overdue for a little rest from writing.  I finished the edits that needed done and the expansion that also had needed done, then after I sent off the copy that ended up as the nearly done manuscript, I put aside the word processors and took some time to myself to read again and immerse myself fully in the outside world once again.  It’s been a few months now, but I’ve been feeling the draw to the keyboard hard again lately, and so I’ve sorted through my list of story ideas and settled on one.

It’s that time again, though, where I second-guess EVERY part of my process.  “IS this actually a good enough idea?”, “The first paragraph, is that even something I’d want to read past?”, “Ugh, these characters!  Am I going to be able to fully develop them after all?” and all the other assorted what-if type questions are running through my head and making it nearly impossible to get going.  I know I thrive under pressure and deadlines, but I don’t really feel comfortable issuing one for myself this time because my real job has been so intense lately that I’m not sure I could meet it.

Either way, I guess it’s just a great thing to be back at the keyboard and working up the ideas for my latest story.  It’s a bit different from my previous works, as they all seem to be these days, but I think it’s got some real potential.  With any luck, I’ll be done with the first draft by the time NaNoWriMo rolls around — just in time to start another project!

Before I leave you again for my well-loved copy of Word, I want to remind you all that my second book, Living for Adventure, is available on Amazon!  Click to check it out — it’s only 99¢ USD, so it’s cheaper than most things you’d buy, and I’d love to hear your feedback on it!

Until next time,
Kate

Hello!

It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?  It took me a little while to get my beta reads back plus do the edits, and of course I had two little trips — Canada to see my best friend marry her other half, and Iceland to enjoy myself and take a little time away — but I’m back!

I’ve got some really great news, though, as a reward for sticking around with me!  That’s right, I’ve finished EVERYTHING needed to get my next book out, and it’s NOW AVAILABLE for your consumption 🙂  I’ve really put a lot of myself into it — it’s called Living for Adventure, and is about a girl who gives up her regular life to travel the world.  It’s very similar to me in this sense, though I can’t say that I’m from a blue blood family, nor do I have a trust fund that would enable me to roam the world as I wished!

I really hope you guys enjoy this one; it was a Camp NaNoWriMo project that I felt passionate about, and I know that my beta readers really enjoyed it!  As promised, it’s available for JUST 99¢, and it will stay that way unless I run free sales on it!  You can grab it , and I hope you like the cover — it’s made from a photo I snapped while in Iceland! 🙂

Also!  If you haven’t yet picked up Roads to Love, it’s going back on sale for FREE!!  There was a sale while I was in Iceland, so I didn’t do a whole lot of promotion, but it’s also going to be available on September 6th and September 9th — my grandma and my dad’s birthdays, respectively — so make sure you or your friends grab it while it’s on promotion if you haven’t scooped it up yet!

Well, that’s it for me right now!

Until next time,
Kate