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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.
Tag Archives: writing work
Of Puppies and Revisions
Rocky recently joined our household. He is a fur ball of energy. We’ve laughed over his insane play, grown tired of his sharp teeth testing toes, rewarded outside pooping, and begun teaching the many lessons a puppy needs to co-exist with humans. (I promise this will turn to writing strategy and not be a gushing puppy love piece.) The puppy training bible recommends owners remember that everything done in these early months establish the rhythms and rules of a dog’s …
Music and Writing
Some nights, silence is the best music as words become sentences and paragraphs fill the page. Some nights the womanly voices of Adele or Bonnie Raitt lure creativity onto a blank page then another and another. Or maybe lost in the beat of Justin Timberlake or Dave Matthews or old Rolling Stones, a new chapter rolls to completion. There was a time music was a required part of my writing routine. I had to be in a private place where I …
Winter Weight
Attending literary events lately has led me to the non-scientific observation that writers in this part of the Midwest might eat too many calories per hour while sitting at their computers during extended cold weather. Pictures from a June book release party featured more people in loose fitting clothes in comparison to images from a similar September event. Add in the Minnesota writer living in Los Angeles since the holidays who announced on Facebook that he’s dropped so much weight …
Unfinished Business
If I were a carpenter my workshop would be crammed full of three legged tables and boxes without drawers and skeletons without shelves. Story fragments have been dragged from computer to computer over the decades, as useless as the matching belt of a coat long ago donated to charity held on to because of a teasing dream of possibility. The pieces written by hand don’t bother me as much as the bits stored digitally. If a character profile is in …
Easter Bunny Thoughts
The Easter Bunny is making his first appearance at the Bay Park Mall in Green Bay. (Note the “he” and move on. Like a ‘she’ bunny couldn’t deliver candy.) If the Easter Bunny is working then why aren’t you? At least the guy in that bad furry costume is earning a few bucks while you stare out the window and think about whether a character should walk out of the room or sneeze. Wait, isn’t that work? If the character …
Drones and the Nervous Writer
I write speculative fiction. Not the kind with aliens or wizards. I write about the near future. It’s not like I haven’t thought about drones being used against civilians to gather information, dispense stuff, even cause collateral losses (aka death of civilians). From spying to patrolling borders to targeted bomb strikes that kill, the international debate about drones cannot be ignored. Truth is I haven’t been ready to travel along the thought path where drones might exist in my neighborhood …
Holiday Ghosts
Writing about holidays is tricky. What do you really remember about childhood holidays? Was the Thanksgiving meal served at noon or maybe in the early evening? Did you realize that somebody had to be in the kitchen by about five in the morning to have a turkey ready to serve at noon? As a kid you didn’t have to think about that side of the holiday. If Grandma or Mom or Auntie Martha wasn’t as silly as the rest of …
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. …
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 …