Kathleen Newton

Hi Friends, Please enjoy the specificity of the homework organization system and the fact that I thought a fourteen-year-old girl would be the saviour of both the human and the fae world. *** I started school two days later, which happened to be Monday.  It was March, middle of the semester and I would be a novelty, the new girl from the big city.  Yippee.  Mom insisted on walking me to the school the first day even though I'm fourteen!  But even though it seriously ticked me off, I didn't complain.  I knew that mom was just trying to adjust to the fact that dad wasn't going to be around much anymore. Come to think of it, he'd never been around much when he worked in New York. The walk to school took about three minutes.  You could see the school from our house.  In my backpack I carried a packed lunch (the school didn't have a cafeteria, everybody ate their lunch in homeroom), seven binders in the colours of the rainbow, notebooks in the same colours,...

 Hi friends, Before you dive into it, yes I have changed the main character's name from Rachel to Miranda. I've changed a lot of the names from the original manuscript so I'll put out a legend at some point to mitigate confusion. And yes, I have changed locations from the real town of Bethel, which I have never visted, to the fictional town of Truite.  I'm still trying to figure out the balance of staying true to the original story and adding new stuff, so kept it short for this first chapter. Just trying to get a feel for the updated character. I don't want her to feel so far off from the original, just a better and more age-appropriate version of her.  If you read all the way to the end, let me know in the comments; where in the world do you think Truite is supposed to be? *** Leaving is always bittersweet, but Miranda felt less sadness than she expected when she packed all her things into boxes and handed over the keys to her one-bedroom apartment in Chinatown. S...

 Hi Friends. We've made it to the first chapter of The Swordbearer!  Oof. You know when you realize you're actually about to put something out there for everyone to see? I was extremely tempted to edit heavily before posting this but that is not the point! The point of this project is to embrace and honor the cringe of our childhood selves. But to ease the vulnerability hangover, I'd love to know in the comments; what was the cringiest thing you did when you were 11? Mine was definitely thinking that 14 was an appropriate age for the heroine of an epic fantasy adventure ...  Confused as Hell? Start  here .  --- I guess it all started when my family moved from New York to Vermont.  Dad got laid off a couple months before, and the only work he could find was as a logger in Bethel, Vermont.  I loved the big city, the hustle and bustle of daily life in New York.  Needless to say I was a bit bitter about this whole move.  Okay, “a bit” is kind of ...

Hi Friends, So here it is, the first rewrite of The Swordbearer. A bit of a rough start, but a start nonetheless. Would love to hear from you in the comment section. What's your favorite fantasy novel? Confused as Hell? Start here .  *** The night was terribly still and dark, in a world very different from our own. We will not spend long in this world right now dear reader, but for the purposes of this story, there are two things you should know now. In this world, there is a Kingdom called Caelcar that hardly stirs after sundown; not in the villages, or the forests save for birds and beasts that don’t know any better. Not even in the cities could you find a soul out after dark for reasons that are too expansive to explain in any detail right now. There are many unexplainable things in the forests of Caelcar, and one of them is the waters. There are streams that babble up from beneath ancient trees which when drunk may give energy to even the weariest traveler; springs that tempt w...

 Hi Friends. So you're gonna need some context for this madness.  When I was 11, I wrote a novel.  Okay, I wrote 30,000 words and called it a novel. But you know, still impressive for an 11-year-old. It was the first Big Thing I accomplished and I'm still really proud of it even though it was, and I cannot stress this enough, utter garbage.  Amazingly, I still have the manuscript saved in a Google drive. It is called The Swordbearer , a title so heinous I can barely utter it aloud, and I re-read it recently for the waves of nostalgia and to have a good laugh about it. As I scrolled through all 100 pages (Sans Serif, 14pt - I was determined to get those triple digits, okay???) I found myself thinking, I probably shouldn't dedicate dozens of hours of my summer to releasing and re-writing this shit .  So I'm gonna dedicate dozens of hours of my summer to releasing and re-writing this shit.  Listen, it's funny as Hell and I think you deserve to know about it....

Hi Friends. I was flipping through old documents last night, silently panicking about what to put on my blog this morning when I came across this short story that I wrote in high school. It is ... very silly. But well-written silliness and I got a chuckle from re-reading it. I'm not sure about the rest of you but as this pandemic rages on and many of us are still confined to our homes (or at least to the neighborhoods immediately surrounding them) I think a dose of silliness is exactly what we need right now. If you enjoy this short story, consider buying my book (link at the top of the page)! Your support helps me continue to create more free content just like this. Can't buy the book? No problem! Subscribing by email is another good way to support this blog and it's free! Thanks for reading and I'm sending lots of love in these uncertain times. xxKathleen Wendy Waters shifted uncomfortably in the hard plastic chair which, to her mortification, groaned in protest unde...