A to Z Challenge Recap

So I spent the last month participating in the A to Z Challenge, writing posts everyday (almost) and now I'm locked in the habit of making sure I have something for tomorrow. But my brain is fried. I'm wiped out from doing letters everyday. One thing for sure, however, they were a good writing prompt. I always had a start on what I would write about. Except for Y day. I was down to writing "Yikes!" as my post until my sister sent me a poem about using spell checker. Go to Y HERE.

I think my favorite post was A, with Loretta Stephenson's art work, from Art By Retta. We got to see a painting being born and I compared it to how writers develop their work in literature. You can read about it HERE. Of course, Loretta finished off the A to Z Challenge with a guest post about Zombies, Zucchini and Zebras. My favorite part of the entire post was her comment about what it had to do with writing: not a zappin' thing!

Now that the challenge is over, you'll be seeing a little bit of everything from me. Expect to see some excerpts of stories I'm working on, and a report from the classroom. I'm halfway through my writing class and am learning a lot about both poetry and prose. My teacher, Kitty Lion, is a published author and great with expressing her ideas. She is both challenging and encouraging and helps us take the bull by the horns to get the most out of our writing.

One more thing I wanted to report to you. I had the opportunity to read an excerpt of my work aloud in class the other day. Up until now, I've been pretty shy about sharing my work. Oh, yes, I have a critique partner who I trade with, but this was an entire room full of people. My hands were shaking and the sweat was pouring off me. It's a good thing I was sitting down, because my legs weren't very stable. But after all that, I discovered it wasn't so bad. And, they liked it! Oh, I got a good critique on my writing, but overall, it was well recieved. It was an excellent experience that I reccommend to all writers. What have you done lately? Share with us?

K for Karen

Welcome to the A to Z Challenge! You can visit the Home Page HERE.

Since today is the letter "K", I'm introducing you to Karen Elizabeth Brown. I spend a lot of time writing about topics that are of interest to myself and others, but today I'm writing about me! I promise not to bore you with all those extraneous details, just the facts that make up my life.

I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, which is a part of Los Angeles, California. My first "publication" was in a writing journal printed by the teacher of my tenth grade English class. It was titled "The Black Box". It didn't win me any awards, nor did it push me into a writing career at the time. What it did do was make me realize that I could take the world as I saw it in my imagination and re-create it into something fascinating.

Writing became a hobby, but was put on hold while I studied music, spent time chanting as a Buddhist, then got married and had three beautiful children. After that, I decided to become a Registered Nurse and I worked nights at the local hospital. But it eventually ended, as all things do, and I fell back into writing.

My writing started out with attempts at journaling, then short stories, then longer ones and finally a four part book, The MacKenzie Chronicles, which is in the re-write process at this time. My sister is Loretta Stephenson (Art By Retta) and she is working on the book covers for the four stories and also the cover for Medieval Muse, a shorter story that will be offered as a free read in August.


You've heard about me, now how about you? What are you working on? Do you remember your first story? Let me hear from you!