<p>My novel Fourteen Stones is shaping up into a real book. 🙂 We&#8217;re working on the proofs, and yesterday I got my first look at the official maps of my fictional world. Four years ago, I drew sketches &#8211; I&#8217;m no visual artist &#8211; to help me keep the places straight in my head and &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/07/19/fourteen-stones-sneak-preview/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Fourteen Stones sne

<p>Each Wednesday on the blog, I’ll share a small prompt as food for reflection. Maybe you’ll also find it inspires you to make some art. Today&#8217;s prompt is explained in the video. 🙂 Short version: you&#8217;re invited to experiment with using magic, or something surreal that breaks the usual &#8220;rules&#8221; of the world, in the &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/07/13/makers-day-7/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-tex

<p>In a couple of weeks, the blog will be shifting gears to talk a bit more about Fourteen Stones and preparation for launch. I&#8217;m so excited to share more about my long-beloved, first-ever fantasy project, which pretty much changed the course of my writing. (And I still can&#8217;t quite believe it&#8217;s going to be a &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/07/12/line-magic-reflections/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">

<p>Each Wednesday on the blog, I’ll share a small prompt as food for reflection. Maybe you’ll also find it inspires you to make some art. Today&#8217;s prompt segues out of last week&#8217;s &#8220;color green.&#8221; This is a short piece of music, &#8220;All in a Garden Green,&#8221; by English Renaissance composer William Byrd (1540-1623). Apologies for &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/07/06/makers-day-6/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class=

<p>I don&#8217;t often do blogposts like this, but realized today that I have a bunch of things coming up, so today&#8217;s post is a Preview of Coming Attractions. 🙂 First, I&#8217;m very excited about two classes I&#8217;ll be teaching soon. Next Monday, 7/11/22, I&#8217;m starting a six-week session of Writing with Musical Inspiration, an online &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/07/05/news-and-updates/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="sc

<p>Each Wednesday on the blog, I’ll share a small prompt as food for reflection. Maybe you’ll also find it inspires you to make some art. Today&#8217;s prompt is a color: green. I recently took a wonderful poetry workshop at Blue Mountain Poetry Salon, in which we were each asked to choose a color and think &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/06/29/makers-day-5/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Maker&#8217;s Day 5</span></a

<p>Today is a bit of a down day. There&#8217;s a lot going on in the world (right now, especially here in the US) that&#8217;s dark and nerve-racking. I&#8217;m definitely having one of those days where I wonder about making art, what it&#8217;s good for, and what I&#8217;m hoping to accomplish with it. I&#8217;m trying to &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/06/28/music-for-meditation/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Music

<p>Each Wednesday on the blog, I’ll share a small prompt as food for reflection. Maybe you’ll also find it inspires you to make some art. This week’s prompt is a musical one: Frederic Chopin&#8217;s &#8220;Ocean&#8221; Etude, performed by Lithuanian pianist Lukas Geniusas. What does it conjure up for you?</p>

<p>If you&#8217;re a writer, do you like to listen to music while you work? For me, that used to be a hard no. I love music, but I used to need all the quiet I could get when I was writing, to get myself into the right head space. Things have changed a little over &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/06/21/musical-motivation/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Musical Motivation</span></a></p>

<p>Each Wednesday on the blog, I’ll share a small prompt as food for reflection. Maybe you’ll also find it inspires you to make some art. This week’s prompt comes from my writing student Sandra Perez, who also takes beautiful photos. She shares these two images as our creative inspiration this week: What might one of &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/06/15/makers-day-3/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Maker&#8217;s Day 3

<p>Today I&#8217;m thinking about writing (when not?), and more particularly, the connection it has for me with mental health. Here on the blog, I&#8217;ve posted about my own mental health challenges, especially with anxiety and depression. I know many of us deal with similar challenges, and I like to be open about mine, because (a) &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/06/14/writing-and-mental-health/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-re

<p>Last week I introduced something new on the blog: Maker&#8217;s Day Wednesdays. Each Wednesday I&#8217;ll share a small prompt as food for reflection. Maybe you&#8217;ll also find it inspires you to make some art. This week&#8217;s prompt is a single word: mosaic A couple of supporting visuals (courtesy of Pinterest): What might this word and &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/06/08/makers-day-2/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-rea

<p>Sometimes I get pretty philosophical here&#8230;hoping you&#8217;ll bear with me today! Making art is a challenging business. I know my fellow &#8220;makers&#8221; relate to this: we spend a lot of time, usually solitary time, piecing together the ideas in our heads, separating tangled threads and weaving them into something we hope will connect with someone &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/06/07/on-hummingbirds/" class="more-link">Continue reading <spa

<p>I thought I&#8217;d try something new on the blog on Wednesdays. In the spirit of creating mental space and maybe also extra beauty, each week I&#8217;ll share a small prompt: a picture, some music, a quote, etc. If you feel like it, I invite you to take a little time and see what the prompt &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/06/01/midweek-break-makers-day/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Midweek break: Maker&#8217;s&n

<p>(aka Feline Writing Motivation) This past weekend, I listened to a thought-provoking speaker talk about the importance of finding and holding onto beauty in difficult times, and how beauty motivates us not just to admiration, but action. I&#8217;m mulling a blogpost that connects making art &#8211; which can sometimes feel like a tiny thing to &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/05/31/purr-therapy-thursday/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="

<p>I had a different post planned for today, but in light of what happened in Texas two days ago, it feels more appropriate to share this music. We&#8217;ve seen far too many of these acts of terrible violence. I don&#8217;t know how change is brought about, how we break free of the stranglehold of business-as-usual &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/05/26/music-for-reflection/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Music for re

<p>Last week, I finished the first draft of the new novel I&#8217;ve been working on since November. Writing a book tends to be an obsessive process for me. Once the story begins to drive itself, at that wonderful locking-into-gear point somewhere in the first thirty pages or so, I don&#8217;t want to do much of &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/05/23/the-book-engine/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">The Book Engine</span

<p>Where&#8217;s Namora? Right now, mostly inside my head. But when my book Fourteen Stones comes out this fall, I hope you&#8217;ll pay my favorite little country a visit. It&#8217;s a beautiful place. Fourteen Stones got its start in the summer of 2015, when my husband and I visited the northwestern corner of Spain, traveling in &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/05/17/welcome-to-namora/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">

<p>I&#8217;m no expert at blogging (as folks who&#8217;ve been following this blog know!). Getting back into the swing of it, I&#8217;m following random thoughts that might turn into a post&#8230; Tomorrow I have a performance with the piano trio I joined right before Covid started. In the winter of 2019 (feels like a very long &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/05/13/piano-thoughts/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Piano

<p>Relaunching the blog after a very long time. Hope everyone is hanging in and staying safe and well! My second novel, Fourteen Stones, is forthcoming this fall from The Patchwork Raven, a brilliant indie press in New Zealand. I&#8217;m thrilled that this book will be out in the world; it was a project of love &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2022/05/10/new-in-2022/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">New in 2022!</span></a></p