Character Q&A Answers {Beloved}

Now, the moment you've been waiting for.
The character I will be interviewing is.......

Erich Carlos!

Erich, tell us a bit about yourself.

Well, I'm a born-again Christian, the second child adopted by the Carlos family, and the one with rugged good looks.

Oh really?  Well, we'll see what your brothers say about that.
We received a few questions for you from Kara—

She already knows about me.

No, my sister.  Kara.  Your Cara is spelled differently.

Oh.  Okay then.

What is your favorite color?

I'd say something fancy like aquamarine or magenta, but then I'd start sounding like Fergus and I don't really want to do that.  That guy needs help.
But no, my favorite color is Blue.

What character in the book are you closest to?

Wow... I don't know.  My entire family is pretty close to me.  Cara.  Kade, my coworker.  They're all important to me.

That's a lot of people.

What can I say?  I'm a lovable guy.

Mmm... moving on.

What is your personality type?

...what?

Hang on.
*15 minutes later*

Okay, after about 100 pointless questions digging into my personality, we've determined that I'm an ESFJ.  Whatever that is.

It means you're extraverted, sensing, feeling, and judging.

Which means...?

You're popular and love socializing.

Oh.  Okay.

Hey, you share a personality type with Harry Truman!

Well hooray for President Truman.

What role do you play in the story?

Erich.  I play Erich.

You know what she means.

Fine.  I'm Cara's older foster brother, and I also *censored*

Sorry, can't having you give away spoilers.

Well, you're no fun.  What kind of an author are you, if you won't even give away minor spoilers?

A good one. *halo*

How do you influence the story?

Um... by living?  I'm not sure what else to say here without being censored again.

Well now, you're catching on.

What is your middle name?

That was random.  My middle name is Isaac, if you really have to get that personal.

Annnnd, that's all the questions!

Really?  Hallelujah!  I was beginning to think I'm not going to have any more secrets.

*grins* it's the price you pay for being in my book.

That wasn't even my choice.

Well... that point could be argued.  But I won't say any more about it.
Thanks so much for coming, Erich!

Hey, don't mention it.  I actually enjoyed myself.
Well, except for when you censored me.
That was just rude.

Yeah... sorry 'bout that.
Anyway, maybe we'll see you again sometime. :)

Of course I will.  All the girls love me.

Hahaha, goodbye, Erich.

Just one more thing—on a more serious note, you're loved.  God loves you.  More than anything.  Don't strive for others' love.  Strive for His.

On that excellent note, I will sign off.

Five Things I Wish I Would've Known When I Started Blogging

There's a first time for everything, right?

For me, first times are usually by trial-and-error, rather than a completely thought-out process.

When I first got a blog, I basically had no idea what I was getting into.

A friend of mine (now my sister-in-law) had graciously invited me to post a few times on her blog, but it wasn't exactly like having my own.

With allllll the responsibility.

5 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started a Blog

1. The Time

At the beginning, I basically saw blogging through rose-colored glasses.

Until I was at it for a few months.

Blogging takes time, y'all.  A lot of time.

For starters, it takes me a week—give or take a few days—to figure out what to post about.  Then comes the fun part of actually sitting down and WRITING the things as opposed to reading or playing music or some other worthy occupation.  And not being distracted by Pinterest.

2. The Coming Embarrassment

Yes, I said embarrassment.  If you're a fellow blogger that has been blogging for any significant amount of time, you can probably relate to the embarrassment of the writing of your first posts (if you can't relate, kudos to you, lucky person).  Here, let's look at a bit from my first post, 'long as y'all don't laugh too hard, 'kay?

I live in the beautiful, windy state of Kansas on a farm (Hence the address of the blog), and I wouldn't have it any other way. :D

My hobbies: I love reading, writing, reading, playing instruments, reading, singing, reading, photography/cinematography, reading, crocheting, and reading.  Oh, and did I mention reading??  I also love watching KC Royals baseball, and if you are not a Royals fan, leave this blog immediately.  Ok, just kidding, just kidding. ;)

...Really?  *Cringes* not exactly the best thing I ever wrote.

So, just to clarify, I'm basically one of those winning-season fans of the Royals.  That was back when they were actually pretty good.  They won, I tracked the games, life was happy.

I couldn't tell you half of the names of the players on the team anymore.  Oops.  (although I did watch a game with my grandma at her house recently and we were both pretty near screaming with shock when they got 10 runs in the top of the 1st inning.  That was pretty fun.)

Also, what's with all the 'Hi, People!' stuff?!  Did I think I was funny, or...? *Scratches head*

All this to say, I'll probably look back on this current post years from now and cringe... but my first post is cringe-worthy enough at the moment.

3. How to Make a Blog Actually Look Good

So, I like to think that my blog looks a whole lot better now than it did at the beginning.

I know it's not perfect, by any means.

I remember when I first created the blog, I thought it was beautiful.

Really, Kaitlyn, you had a simple template with a boring, Blogger-made header, with a Blogger background.  Now I know there's lots of blogs out there that do this, and they look fabulous.  But I also had cheesy gadget titles (oh, who'm I kidding; they're still cheesy) and... I just had no idea how to blog.

But it was a start.

Also, have y'all noticed that I'm starting to make post graphics that actually sorta kinda look similar?  I'm thinking about making them for all my posts (or a good amount of them, anyway) for the sake of uniformity... but it's kind of a scary concept.  Especially when young Kaitlyn had no idea what she was doing and didn't even make graphics to begin with.

(Well... she technically still doesn't know what she's doing.  But shh, don't tell her that.)

4. The Difficulty of Posting Regularly
As you may have noticed, this is a very big problem of mine.
Back at the beginning, I thought the blogging formula was so simple.  I had post ideas, and I couldn't wait to put them to use.  I was going to have a regular posting schedule of once a week or more, and it was going to work out just like a cute lil' movie, right?
Yeah no.  I don't think I've ever done something that takes so much effort to do regularly.
Except exercise.  But that's a different story.
I think the key to posting regularly is planning and starting to write the posts weeks or days in advance.  For me, at least.  Usually when I open Blogger, I stare at my list of posts, then chicken out and convince myself that I'll do it tomorrow.
Day after day.
And yes, that's probably why it took me two months to post once.

5. The Comments
Another misconception I had when I first started was that I'd be flooded with more comments on every single post than I'd know what to do with.
Welllll... it didn't exactly happen that way.  I read a blog post once that mentioned that replying to comments would increase your page views and encourage more comments by interacting with your readers.
I tried.  I really did.  But obviously not long enough, and it kind of goes in spurts. XD So when/if you do comment, I'm not ignoring you.  Promise.  I just... don't take the time to reply.  I suppose I'll have to remedy that...

*****

So, whether you're new to the blogosphere or a veteran, I hope you found this post at least somewhat entertaining, if not even helpful (no, don't laugh)!  Can you relate to any of these?

Character Q&A {Beloved}

Every author is always ready to share all things possible about their books (even though I'll become completely tongue-tied if you walk up to me and ask me what my book is about).  So of course I'll be doing multiple posts about Beloved, since... well... I'm a writer.  Therefore, rather than do a regular character spotlight, I thought I might do a character Q&A, since my last Q&A got a good response.

I'll put a poll up on the sidebar so y'all can vote on which character you want, and then you can comment your questions.
If you don't know exactly who these characters are, I guess you'll just have to wait until the questions are answered.

So choose wisely. B-)

Your choices are:

-Fergus

-Kade
-Cara

-Erich

-Mrs. Carlos

-Peter
-Ashley

Feel free to ask any questions you like, but I retain the right to refuse any questions for any reason.

Or, rather, the characters do.
Deadline is Sunday, May 20!

Thanks, God

You know what, folks?

I don't deserve the life I lead.

I don't deserve a mom that will do extra work on my birthday just so I don't have to.

I don't deserve a daddy that will do almost anything for me.

I don't deserve a twin that invites me to check his cows with him every day.

I don't deserve a sister-in-law that will be silly and giggly with me instead of giving me the look.

I don't deserve a family so full of love and laughter.

I don't deserve best friends that will go with me to the ends of the earth.

I don't deserve the ladies at church that I can tease while we work in the kitchen after a funeral or potluck.

I don't deserve a church family as amazing as mine.

And I definitely don't deserve a God who would bless me with all of these things.

But y'know what?

He says I'm worth it.

Thanks, God.