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Cynthia Kraack is a Twin Cities-based writer and winner of the 2010 Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for Fiction for her first work, Minnesota Cold. In September 2010, North Star Press of St. Cloud released her second novel Ashwood, the first book in a speculative fiction trilogy following one family’s experience after a global economic depression.
Kraack's new novel Harvesting Ashwood: Minnesota 2037 builds on the tradition of Ashwood by challenging today’s status quo within the twists and turns of a spellbinding thriller.
Kraack explores social issues from today’s culture in a different future. From the basic right of people to daily food to the complex relationship the United States has with its children, the Ashwood series pushes readers to question the trade-offs made by politicians under the pressure of military expansion or international diplomacy.
About Book Festivals
Remember when the Scholastic Book Fair was set up in the hallways at your school? With clean order forms and a pencil in hand, you and your class got to walk through the stacks and pick out books that birthday money or your parents might buy. Then there were the cool stickers and trinkets that could only be bought during the event. It was hard to stretch your dollars during this once a year delight. Zoom through a few decades …
Sex Scenes
I just finished writing a four paragraph sex scene in a new work. The scene is in a male point of view. Breasts are prominent along with one or two other features this character appreciates. When writing sex scenes, I tend to go for a more minimal approach laced with a heavy dose of sensual information. Mechanics are important, but a couple of heady details about the scents, the tactile sensations, the sights tap into more of my characters’ experience. …
Does Gender Make a Difference?
A Room of Her Own Foundation is dedicated to helping women artists achieve the privacy and financial support necessary to pursue their art. For a handful of very fortunate women AHOHO’s 6th Gift of Freedom Award has provided $50,000 to make that possible. Recently they asked me to complete a survey about my life as a woman writer. Their goal is to collect 50,000 completed surveys and gain insights into how creative women think about their work, opportunities and obstacles. …
Delete 785 Words
For the first time I sent a short story to a professional editor before submitting it to a short list of publications during open submission. He did a good job and had nice words about the story’s potential. With two weeks until a major submission deadline I realized that one publication had a 5,000 word limit. My professionally edited story owns a 5,784 word count. Wham. Crisis. Two days later, after avoiding the problem by writing other new material and …
Writing from the Seniors Apartment
If you need a very quiet place to work, look up a friendly senior citizen living in a senior apartment complex who needs someone to look after the place for a few days. My father is still in transitional care, the floor guy is stretching the refinishing our hardwood floors over too many days, and the pile of things to do that can’t be done in Caribou’s has grown alarmingly. So today I am working at the kitchen desk of …
Writing during Crisis
My elderly father is seriously ill. This time the call came on Sunday evening while my husband and I finished dinner. The buildup to the phone ringing developed piece by piece through two weeks of multiple doctor visits, tests, worry. He is fragile. Time spent next to his hospital bed disappears like a ball of yarn rolling down a staircase. The doctor was supposed to be in at ten only now it is eleven thirty and then it becomes one …
Did I Tell You about Getting Sick?
So I spent a week in sick bay. Got some good fiction writing done between coughing attacks. Maybe traveling country roads with a fictional father and son was easier than dealing with a very real temperature and aching body. Maybe I’ll read those pages in a few weeks and ask “what was I thinking” then remember that I wasn’t really thinking very much. Fortunately I don’t get hauled under by wandering viral sicknesses very often because I am a restless …
Time for Change?
When is the time right for major change? My life as a writer is far less structured than any other role in my career. Lately I’ve been focusing on book activities and resurrecting a collection of short stories. There have been signings and book club gatherings and networking on the book’s behalf. The short story collection is a whole different set of activities centered on building a submission plan for individual stories and wading into revision with some works so …
Risk Sharing
A key member of a small press asked why a publisher should accept financial risk for bringing a writer’s work to the market. His company expected writers to share in the cost of producing books and marketing, usually thousands of dollars. They are not unique. I can’t totally agree. As a freelance writer producing work for Fortune 500 companies, I’m not asked to assume financial risk for the success of a website or video. The corporation’s investment in the content …
Scratch. Rewrite.
A sad tale of technology gone wrong—a favorite story turned into a novella was stored on a flash drive about seven years ago. The flash drive has now disappeared and all that remains is the original short story as submitted for a summer program at the Iowa Writers Workshop. The thirteen pages in hand are okay, but flawed. The core story is good, but it is rather like finding blueprints for all the rooms adjoining the kitchen when thinking about …