This post originally appeared in the February 2019 edition of my newsletter Readiculous Musings. You can subscribe for it HERE. One thing...

This post originally appeared in the September 2018 edition of my newsletter Readiculous Musings. You can subscribe for it  HERE . (I’m stealing and updating from an old post I wrote about finding my voice and my ownvoices stories) This summer I had an awesome August full of things that give me such joy and hope as an Asian reader and creator! I grew up without seeing myself in mainstream media and I never knew how it affected my perception of myself until I went away to coll

So, I am stealing an idea from my writer BFF, Claribel Ortega and posting some of my content a month after it appears in my newsletter. It won’t be everything, just stuff that I think might be interesting to people and probably anything that is a record of my journey in publishing! So here we go! This post originally appeared in the July 2018 edition of my newsletter Readiculous Musings. You can subscribe for it HERE . Things are pretty hard these days. And it’s a time where

So, I was inspired by my own revisions to write out a quick post based on my methods and path toward shiny happy manuscript town. To be honest, I still live in revision land which I describe as a a town sitting on a giant cliff (good for screaming into the void), a cave of despair, and a fountain of wine. So, without further ado, my main revision steps: ‣ “mulling” period/Absorb the critique – I usually take 1-3 days to just mull over the notes. (This time frame changes with

You guys, I’m going to be published! Okay, it’s been a MINUTE since I posted and I’m so sorry about that, but it’s for a GOOD reason. I...

I’m back! Hello strangers, remember me? I’m the person that’s supposed to keep this blog updated, even though I haven’t posted in MONTHS. I apologize for my LONG absence, but to be fair you can still find me pretty regularly over at Writer’s Block Party ! And I have been much better at keeping up my new(ish) Authortube/Booktube vlog over at YouTube. STILL, this blog was my first love and I’ve been horrible at keeping it updated. Partly because I  did want to try out those o

The Real Reason We Need Diverse Books Eight kids show Matt de la Pena the the real reason We Need Diverse Books. *mic drop* Visit our Indiegogo campaign to support our mission: http://igg.me/at/diversebooks TRANSCRIPT: Matt de la Peña: So, hey guys. I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about books. I’m an author, right. Since there was more interest in my Diversity Conversation post than I expected (and because I do not consider myself an expert on this topic), I t

In honor of Author Mentor Match, I made ANOTHER vlog. I know, I know. You’re thinking, “Kat, can you calm down on these vlogs?” And my...

I want to write an honest post about something that has always worried me and probably will always worry me as I keep writing about my heritage. It’s a special kind of imposter syndrome, the fear that I am appropriating my own culture for my art. There are so many conversations about #ownvoices and #ownyourown. There are so many people saying meaningful and important things. Sometimes I try to chime in, but I always feel like others say it better, so signal boosting has been

Hey guys, I know I haven’t written in a bit, and that’s partly because I didn’t have too much to write about. My day job has been really busy and I am finished with my bigger round of revisions (finally!). However, I came back to talk about something that has been a theme of many conversations I have lately: Imposter Syndrome. Here’s the thing. We talk a lot about the struggle to get accepted, to find someone to champion us (whether that’s an agent or editor). But there’s not

I already wrote a step-by-step querying guide HERE . But I left out the biggest piece of the puzzle: Writing the query letter. So here you go, my attempt at a query letter guide. First and most important piece of advice I can give is to read successful queries! Query Letter Success Query Tracker Success Stories Writer’s Digest Successful Queries Also, reading sites that give query advice is very helpful. A great one is Janet Reid’s  Query Shark .  Okay, so let’s get to the me

So, I just went through the journey we call querying and I thought I’d write about it since I love step-by-step guides. This post probably won’t be completely comprehensive, but I did try to include everything I personally had questions about. And if you have any additional questions, feel free to ask them in the comments and I’ll try to use my resources, friends, CPs, etc. to answer them. Step 1: Write your query (This will be a separate post. Just need to compile querying a

Dialogue is a funny thing. It is the voice of your characters, but it is not necessarily always the voice of your narrative (especially when you’re writing in third person). This means that not only do you have to figure out how to give your story a voice, but also each individual character (wow, writing is hard y’all). Anyway, here are a few tips that I’ve picked up as I’ve been writing and revising. Common Problems When Writing Dialogue: Problem:  Overly formal dialogue. Fo

I present to you my story of how I got my agent (Warning: This post is LONG and full of GIFs): I started my professional writing journey when I had a weird dream (yea, I know, one of those people). I told my cousin about it because she’s a writer and I said, “Do you think that could be a book you would write?” She said, “No, but you could write it.” And I felt like that was a ridiculous idea. So I wrote it. It was the worst book ever. But it rekindled a love of writing that

Next up in Adventures in Revising…Deleting WHOLE scenes.These are my lessons in mapping out my story (this can happen either before or...

I have a slightly obsessive personality. So when I get into something I do a lot of research and (over) analyze the heck out of it. So...