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Kelly I. Hitchcock Posts

Six Sentence Sunday 7/29/2012

Published by Kelly on July 29, 2012

Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 11 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Lacey, a woman who’s struggled for 4 years to sell the house that she owned with her ex-husband, the last symbol of her old life. She always said when she sold the house, she’d cover up the tattoo she got the day after she got married.

She’d always said she’d treat herself to a Betsey Johnson swimsuit when the house sold, but they’d announced a month ago that they were going out of business. By the time the house sold, she wouldn’t have a chance. Oh well, it made a better early birthday present anyway, Lacey thought to herself, admiring the suit as she relaxed on the chaise. But the tattoo – she couldn’t really cheat with the tattoo. If she covered it up now, it would only remind her that those last ties still weren’t severed. For the millionth time, she pushed a familiar thought from her head… that it would never be over...

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com, and come back to visit next week!

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Six Sentence Sunday 7/22/2012

Published by Kelly on July 22, 2012

I have not fallen off the Six Sentence Sunday planet, I promise. Actually, I have been spending pretty much every spare minute editing the hell out of my new novel, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 12 weeks, I will be sharing with you a 6-sentence snippet from this book, starting today.

Today we meet Jenna, a college girl getting her first tattoo with her sister and her father, the two closest people in her life. She has a complicated and tense relationship with her mother, who kicked her out of the house when she was growing up.

Jenna turned the corner to the narrow hallway that led to the house’s single bathroom at the end of it, walking by a large tin type photo they’d taken at Silver Dollar City for Jenna’s twelfth birthday.  They’d dressed them all up in olde tyme outfits, her father almost a spitting image of Jed Clampett.  Jenna sat on his knee in a bonnet and pigtails, the frilly frock they’d dressed her in gathered in a big pile of ruffles that fell well below her short legs.  Laura wore what looked like a christening gown even though she was nine years old, smiling softly under her bright white lace bonnet, her hand resting on the shoulder of their mother, the one Jenna struggled to call “Mom”.  In the photo, she looked tired, probably from chasing two high-energy girls who constantly caused trouble when they were together around a theme park all day.

Jenna was a spitting image of her mother, especially in this photo, but the similarities ended there.

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com, and come back to visit next week!

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The Versatile Blogger Award – Thanks!

Published by Kelly on July 16, 2012

Versatile Blogger AwardThanks to my lovely author pal Denise DeSio for nominating me for this award. According to the rules, I must now tell you 7 things about myself:

  1. I’ve just finished writing and editing my second novel-length work, a collection of short stories about women and their tattoos. It’s called Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook.
  2. My first book, The Redheaded Stepchild, is a self-published collection of disjointed short stories about Cady, a young woman dealing with the presence of a difficult stepmother. No zombies or vampires.
  3. The Redheaded Stepchild has been chosen as a semi-finalist in Literary Fiction by 2012 Kindle Book Reviews. Finalists will be chosen on September 1, 2012 and winners will be chosen on October 1, 2012.
  4. I finally, after four years, sold the house I owned with my ex. Stupid recession.
  5. I love all kinds of cheese, especially provel, which is apparently not a substance recognized by the state of Texas. Case in point: favorite meal = grilled cheese and tomato soup. Also not Texas appropriate, especially in July.
  6. I am a ridiculously skilled seamstress. Why buy a new summer wardrobe when you can be a glutton for punishment like myself, spend hours making it yourself, and spend just as much money?
  7. I’m a total geek. I drool at HTML5, can write specialized subsets of XML, and I love Battlestar Galactica.

I’d like to nominate the following people for this award:

Congratulations! If I didn’t send you the award by email, please feel free to grab the award image and post it on your site, and don’t forget to pass it on.

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Semi-finally, a best indie book of 2012

Published by Kelly on July 2, 2012

Some time ago I entered The Redheaded Stepchild in The Kindle Book Review‘s “Best Indie Fiction of 2012” contest, in their literary category.

I have to admit it made my July when I looked at their list of semi-finalists this morning and found my name. They’ll announce finalists in September – but for now, I can smile knowing I have a nice gold sunburst to add to my very short list of accolades.

Happy July, everyone 🙂

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Traditional & Indie Publishing: Weapons in the Author Arsenal

Published by Kelly on June 25, 2012

I finally finished writing my second novel, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook on Saturday. Yes, hooray. No, hold the champagne. Now is when the *really* hard work begins: engaging my beta readers, rearranging stories, revising, and editing, editing, and more editing.

Not to mention, deciding how I want to publish, revising my shameless query letter, and beginning the soul-sucking process of sending out queries to publishers. As faithful fans of the Kelly Hitchcock literary flavor know, I self-published my first novel, The Redheaded Stepchild. I don’t have anything against traditional publishing, I just grew tired of the querying (and rejection) process and believed what everyone turned around and said about it – that it wasn’t marketable enough. Yes, this was a nice way of saying “Your first book is about you, which is a little self-indulgent, don’t you think? Plus, you know no one gives a shit about you, right?”

Portrait of Woman in Ink is quite a bit more marketable, I think, and has a much more focused appeal (for those not familiar with the literary adventures of Kelly Hitchcock, it’s a collection of short stories about women and their tattoos). As such, I think it’s more geared toward a more traditional publishing road to perdition. Since this site is wholly my personal ramblings, I feel no shame in saying that it is my personal opinion that authors should not limit themselves to one method over another: self publishing versus traditional publishing. How can you extol all the virtues and bitch about all the drawbacks of each form if you haven’t done them both?

I’ve traditionally published shorter works – short stories, poems, essays, but I have yet to traditionally publish a book. I want to give it a try with Portrait of Woman in Ink, even though I know it’ll be a soul-sucking process full of rejection and self-loathing. Why? Because it’ll be worth it. And yeah, when it goes out of print and I am 80 years old (but still hot), I’ll turn around and self-publish it. By that time, I’ll have a rabid fanbase of no less than 37 people who crave the Kelly Hitchcock literary flavor with a ravenous bloodlust, except for word blood.

Also, I turned 30 last week. Go me.

What do you think? Is it truly an “Us V Them” (indies vs. traditionals) world out there, or should all serious authors dip their feet into both?

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The End. No wait… The End. No wait…

Published by Kelly on June 4, 2012

For my money, the hardest part of writing a book is figuring out where to end it. With my first book, The Redheaded Stepchild, it took me nearly two years to figure out an ending. The book was chiefly about the complicated relationship I had with my ex-stepmother, and even when that relationship was over, it wasn’t really over in my mind, so pinning down an ending was difficult. Even though I could pinpoint our last interaction, it still didn’t feel like “the end” in my mind. So I did what any writer does when they don’t know how to end a story: I picked an ending, and I went with it.

I’m working diligently on the last chapter of my current work in progress, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to end it. Why? Because this last chapter is the chapter about me, and I don’t know this particular story of my life ends. For those of us who write autobiographically, or semi-autobiographically, as my case may be, endings are unbelievably hard to write. What’s keeping from finishing my book is the decision to either wait to see how my story shakes out, or just make something up.

What do you think? Is making up an ending cheating? Or do I pick an ending and go with it?

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Six Sentence Sunday 6/3/2012

Published by Kelly on June 3, 2012

It’s another Six Sentence Sunday, and happy summer to y’all! Today, we meet Jenna, the main character of the first story in Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Jenna is getting ready to get a tattoo with her father and sister, and is reflecting on her complicated relationship with her mother.

Jenna was a spitting image of her mother, especially in this photo, but the similarities ended there.  Her mom just didn’t get her, and never had.  She didn’t get why she’d want to go to college when she could marry her high school boyfriend and settle down in the picturesque Ozark hills.  Jenna thought those days had passed long ago; maybe it was why her mother was the only one in the photo who actually looked like she fit in the era they were simulating, who didn’t look like she was wearing a costume.  If it weren’t for the fact that she looked so much like her mom, she might’ve second guessed her parentage.  But not her father… he got Jenna, so much that he’d sacrificed his marriage to their mother to keep the kind of closeness they’d always shared.

Thanks for dropping by! Be sure to check out the other talented peeps at Six Sentence Sunday and drop them a line, too.

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