WHAT?
Author and writer. I’ve written five novels, some speculative fiction and one literary. Before and during my publishing years, I’ve also been a freelance writer in the interactive niche, designing business simulation games and creating content for consumer websites.
WHY?
I’ve been a corporate professional because that was easy. I sing because music is like air. I have come to understand I write because life is so unsatisfying if I don’t. It wasn’t an easy lesson to learn.
In a footlocker in our basement are a number of notebooks filled with four or five paragraph short stories, longish poems, a few essays and many songs all handwritten in pencil when I was a kid. I was the Scholastic poetry winner, the yearbook editor, the college newspaper entertainment editor and graduated from journalism college when the reality of earning a living interrupted an undefined dream. A husband, two kids, a number of jobs, and much uneasiness later, I read David Whyte’s The Heart Aroused and took a short story class at The Loft. I learned that creative writing would keep my psyche balanced.
HOW?
For the last two years I have been a full-time author. Until I was forty I wrote a half hour in the early morning before work and in the late evening when the kids did homework or slept. Eventually I was able to downsize work and write more.
Most of my writing time is spent in my office at a sweet desk. But, I have learned to make use of time at coffee shops, in airport terminals, on airplanes, while waiting in a doctor’s office. I write mostly on a computer or tablet. When deeply concentrating on a small scene, I print it out and work on paper. I start every major revision with a paper copy.
Music is part of my environment unless I am proofing or working my way through something intense. Classical, jazz, rock, folk, pop all have a place in my playlists. I always prefer a window where I work and love seeing trees. City energy is good. Country quiet is excellent.
Cynthia Kraack’s latest novel, The High Cost of Flowers, is a winner in both the contemporary fiction and literary fiction categories of the 25th Annual Midwest Book Award for Fiction. She has had short stories receive recognition by Glimmer Train, Muddy Water and the Hal Prize for Literature. She is a on the founding board of Write On, Door County, a writing center and residency program based in Wisconsin. Cynthia has a M.F.A., a graduate degree from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Marquette University. She is a native of Wisconsin and lives in Minnesota. The High Cost of Flowers, as well as Cynthia’s other novels, can be purchased on Amazon.
Links:
Facebook Cynthia Kraack Writer
Twitter @c_kraack
Website Cynthia Kraack
Blog Cynthia Kraack Blog
Linda K. Sienkiewicz is the author of In the Context of Love: a new contemporary fiction about love, lust, and family secrets.
Angelica Schirrick had always suspected there was something deeply disturbing about her family, but the truth was more than she bargained for.
“Linda K. Sienkiewicz’s powerful and richly detailed debut novel is at once a love story, a cautionary tale, and an inspirational journey.” ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of National Book Award Finalist, American Salvage, and critically acclaimed Once Upon a River, and Mothers, Tell Your Daughters
Buy now: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound