Karen Frazier - Blog

Avalanche Release - 3/1/10

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:14:32 -0800

March 1 is fast approaching, and with that date the publication of my latest book, Avalanche of Spirits: The Ghosts of Wellington.

This book means a lot to me. They all do, but this one is special. It is the story of an event and a place that have become very personal to me.

Wellington, Washington is the site of the worst avalanche disaster in the history of the United States. Today, it is a hiking trail in a gorgeous and peaceful alpine setting.

I spent the summer of 2009 at Wellington, getting to know the location. I also spent the summer doing research, getting to know the history. Paranormal investigators who spend much of their time at Wellington have been generous enough to share their experiences and stories with me. The result is the book, Avalanche of Spirits: The Ghosts of Wellington. I am looking forward to sharing Wellington with the world.

New Project - The Namasté Project

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 10:51:29 -0800

I've embarked on a new project, The Namasté Project. I wish I could say it was done for altruistic reasons, but the truth is that it is as much about personal growth for me.

So far, I'm pretty darn humbled by the experience, but I'm also learning a lot about myself. In the end, it will be a book. And maybe a documentary. We'll see how it goes and if it winds up being anything interesting enough for others to want to watch.

Watch Out Film World, Here I Come

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 10:15:45 -0800

Sometimes you just have to jump in with both feet.

I'm constantly searching for stories to tell. Once I find them, my next task is to find the proper format in which to tell them. Up until now, it has always been through written expression or the occasional short film. Then I went to the site of the Wellington avalanche disaster in Washington State's Cascade Mountains.

This is a story that has already been told extremely well in writing by author Gary Kirst in The White Cascade. Now it needs to be told documentary-style, as well.

The weight of history is there at Wellington. You can feel it as you walk through the behemoth of a snow shed. The snow shed and the rail to trails hiking trail, the Iron Goat Trail, are all that remain of the once booming Great Northern Railway that ran through avalanche-prone Stevens Pass at the turn of the century.

Here's the thing. There is more than history at Wellington. Something else is going on there. I've always been pretty skeptical about ghosts. And yet....

If there is a place that ultimately topples me from that position, it will be Wellington.

We have a plan. We have a crew and a cast. We have dates set for filming. We have the equipment. I am becoming a documentary film maker.

Telling stories is what I do - in whatever format will best serve the story that I have to tell. Watch out world, here I come. I am, as I always have, meeting the challenge head-on.

Avalanche of Spirits: The Ghosts of Wellington is in pre-production and scheduled to be released on March, 1, 2010, the 100 year anniversary of the avalanche at Wellington.

To learn more about Avalanche of Spirits, please visit our website.

Learning - it's always a good thing

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:47:19 -0800

You know the saying, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks?" What am I saying - of course you do.

Big news, folks. Old dog. New tricks!

I've been learning the art of podcasting. I've also been learning how to do sound editing. It's out of necessity. Why? Because my voice on podcast always winds up quieter than anyone else's. No one has ever accused me of being a quiet person, so I find this rather curious. I'm guessing it must have something to do with my microphone sensitivity. That being said, I have learned to amplify my voice in the finished product.

Here's another thing I learned. I now know what the word "um" looks like in the squiggly lines that appear onscreen when you edit sound. I know how to surgically excise it, and I use this power for good - not evil.

Am I an expert sound editor? Heck no - I'm no more of an expert at editing sound than I am at playing mandolin - something else that I am currently learning. But I am learning. Each podcast that I edit, I'll add a bit to my knowledge until I'm an old pro. Or an old dog - with a new trick.

A lonely profession?

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:49:28 -0800

There are those who talk of the loneliness of the writer. They speak of hours spent sitting alone with a computer or typewriter and the solitary frustration of battles with the blank page.

That hasn't been my experience.

I get to have really cool experiences as a writer that I wouldn't otherwise have. Here's a for instance. Today, I had a past life regression hypnotherapy session. This is the second session I've had. Both were for the purpose of writing articles. In a few weeks, I am going to undergo a past life regression session live for a podcast.

Here's another one. Last weekend, I got to tag along and ask annoying questions while a paranormal group investigated a haunted mansion. And not the Disney kind. Later this month I get to go with the same paranormal group and investigate a reportedly haunted hotel. How cool is that?

I love to write, and I really love all of the stuff that comes with writing under the guise of research. I've talked with interesting and entertaining people. I've talked with famous people. I've had the chance to have unusual experiences. And perhaps best of all, I have the chance to ask as many questions as I can come up with whenever I meet and talk with someone.

For a curious cat like me, I just can't imagine any better line of work.

Waiting for Inspiration

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:14:04 -0800

I've had people ask me where I get my inspiration as a writer. Quite often the answer is, "I don't know - stuff just pops into my head." I wish I had a more concrete answer than that, but it is what happens. One minute there's nothing there and the next minute - *poof* - there it is.

I think we all have moments of inspiration. But, I also think that some people have a more finely developed ability to tune into them. Learning to listen to the voice within that is the source of creativity is a skill that gains strength as you begin to honor your internal thought processes. It's like strengthening a muscle. The more you listen and the more you act, the stronger your creative voice becomes.

In my past life as a chiropractic assistant, I used to go to seminars called the Power Zone. The facilitator of the seminars, Dr. Ron Oberstein talked about something that he called "innate thought flashes." During the seminar, we would have a piece of paper that sat in front of us with the title, Innate Thought Flashes, on top. The rest of the paper was blank. Dr. Ron would tell seminar participants that anything that popped into our mind throughout the course of the seminar - even something as mundane as, "Oh crap - I have to pay the power bill," needed to be written down on the paper as soon as it arose. And then, after the seminar, we were to take a look at our thought flashes from throughout the day and act on them appropriately. It was Ron's contention that those innate thought flashes were our creativity arising. And if we didn't acknowledge and use those things that arose, our innate creativity would eventually learn that we didn't listen to it and shut off. Or at least get really, really quiet.

This made - and continues to make - tremendous sense to me. If ingored those things that popped into my head, I'd be missing out on some of my best thoughts and ideas.

So what to do if you truly feel you don't have innate thought flashes? Start to listen. It may be that your inner voice has grown quiet. And if you still can't hear anything? There's something to be said for just sitting down and writing.

The blank page is one of the most daunting things we face as writers. What if nothing arises and the page stays forever blank? This is a common fear. But here's what I've learned. Never once has the page stayed blank, even in the absence of innate thought flashes. If my innate is quiet and I have a blank page, I just start writing. Whatever is in my mind. Eventually, usually quite quickly, something begins to take shape, and I am off to the races.

Brilliance at 2 a.m.

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:43:22 -0800

It is the blessing - or curse - of the writer that we seldom get a good night's sleep. Or at least, that is the case with me.

I go to bed with stuff in my head. Writing stuff. It takes a while to quiet down all of the words and the ideas competing for my attention. Often I wake up in the middle of the night with new stuff in my head. You've got it - writing stuff. I learned long ago that thinking, "Oh I'll remember..." and going back to sleep causes me to lose some of the best ideas ever. Or at least they seem like the best ideas ever at 2 a.m. to my sleep-addled brain.

So, I keep a little pad next to the bed. If I wake up, I surreptitiously turn on my little book light, using my body to shield it from my slumbering husband, and quickly write whatever thought has popped into my head.

Here's what I've discovered. I'm only occasionally brilliant at 2 a.m. I love those mornings when I wake up and there is something a) legible, b) understandable and c) usable on my little bedside pad. Unfortunately, those mornings don't occur terribly frequently.

More often than not I wake up and see something scribbled like, "write story on belly button lint," "what if a hot dog got married and had a family," or my personal favorite of all time, "a day in the life of porridge." I'm not certain - but I don't think that is what I meant with the last one - but it is how it came out. Go figure.

This morning, I woke up to a good one. It actually held up in the light of day and didn't involve the anthropomorphization of food. All good things. I'm working on it now, and I'm happy to report that I think it's going somewhere. Probably tonight, I'll go to sleep with it in my head. And then, inspiration will strike at 2 a.m. Tomorrow, I may have my ending. I'm sure of it. "What if sausage did somersaults?"

Ego? What ego?

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:00:05 -0800

I used to have an ego. Then I became a writer. That was the end of that.

As a writer for Corporate America, I quickly learned that if I led with my ego, it was going to be crushed. Not because I couldn't write, but because when you are writing for someone else, they have very specific ideas about what they want. Or, perhaps more accurately, they have very specific ideas about what they don't want. And usually they don't know they don't want it until you've written it.

Writing for others is a collaborative process. And I quickly discovered that how I view that process is key to my success. There were two ways I can go about it. I can lead with my ego and spend a lot of time being frustrated, or I can open myself up to the collaboration and do my best to give my co-collaborator what they want.

Guess which one I chose? No. Not the ego. That went away a long time ago, and I am a happier and more peaceful writer as a result.

One of the Lucky Ones

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:55:10 -0800

I'm an extremely curious person. I want to know stuff. I crave new knowledge. This makes freelance writing the perfect profession for me. Writing gives me the opportunity to research topics, develop article ideas, and to cram my brain chock full of information. It also makes me insanely difficult to beat at Trivial Pursuit.

When I hear about something new, I'm not satisfied with just a news blurb or a quick sound bite. Instead, I want to dig into the topic in depth. And then, once I know what I now know, I want to write about it so that others can be filled with the same wonder of discovery that I have.

I am blessed to be living in the information age. With the Internet, I have access to tremendous amounts of knowledge, which feeds my addiction to new information. I am also an insatiable reader. I love seeing how other people put what they know, see, think and feel into words. As a child, I spent hours in the library. Now they see me coming at Amazon.com and Borders, and they start to rub their hands in glee.

Words and knowledge go hand-in-hand. Writing and curiosity are a match made in heaven. And I am thoroughly blessed to have not only the insatiable desire to learn, but also the gift to communicate what I know. The way I see it, that makes me one of the lucky ones.

A Writer's Life

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:35:29 -0800

The life of a freelance writer is never dull. At any given moment, I could have several projects going - such as writing a book on job hunting, editing a World of Warcraft Manual, writing a hypnotherapy website, interviewing a world-renowned UFOlogist, creating sports psychology workbooks and writing an article on spirit photography. All at once.

I like it that way. It keeps my mind active and involved. I have the opportunity to discover updated information on topics that interest me. Sometimes, I get to learn about new topics. I become an instant expert.

Even better - there is something inside of me that thrives on the challenge of keeping all of the balls in the air. And the subtle pressure of putting out a quality product within a deadline. I love it. I thrive on it. It is a big part of who I am. I can't imagine it any other way.