The Writer's Other Life with Kathleen Kaska

My Other Life
Kathleen Kaska

I’m one of those people who doesn't have natural talents. That used to bother me until I realized that learning something new could be just as rewarding as being born with an innate ability. I’ve learned to do several things during my sixty-something years: write; draw; train in order to run a Marathon; and my most challenging endeavor, teach middle school kids. Oh, and recently, I’ve learned to troubleshoot my way around technical computer and software issues; okay, may not that, but at least I try.

Writers don’t often get to talk about what else they do, so when Karla presented me with her latest blog topic, I was grateful for the opportunity. I think I wanted to be an artist long before I wanted to write, but since every face I drew turned out looking like a wrinkled squash, I decided to give up on right-brain activities and focus on science and teaching. It wasn’t until I retired from the classroom that I signed up for art classes.

For the first year and a half, drawing was a struggle, but my instructor encouraged me to stay with it, assuring me that things would “click” one day.  She was right. I was sketching an old barn from a photo I’d taken. I was having trouble making the sloping roof look like it was actually sloping. I almost gave up, but I’d put so much time into it that I trudged on until the image magically appeared. I did several more landscapes before I tackled animals and most recently birds. Every now and then I try sketching a face. Although my skills have advanced from the wrinkled squash stage, I’m not quite there yet.

I have a few other tasks I’d like to learn: improving my chess game so I can beat people older than nine: fly a plane, but since I’m afraid of heights, I put that one on the back burner. I also thought about hiring a voice coach to teach me how to sing, but I’m smart enough to know my limits.


Bio:
Kathleen Kaska writes the award-winning Sydney Lockhart Mysteries set in the 1950s. Her first two books Murder at the Arlington and Murder at the Luther, were selected as bonus-books for the Pulpwood Queens Book Group, the largest book group in the country. The third book in the series, Murder at the Galvez, was released in 2012. She also writes the Classic Triviography Mystery Series, which includes The Agatha Christie Triviography and Quiz Book, The Alfred Hitchcock Triviography and Quiz Book, and The Sherlock Holmes Triviography and Quiz Book. The Alfred Hitchcock and the Sherlock Holmes trivia books are finalists for the 2013 EPIC award in nonfiction Her nonfiction book, The Man Who Saved the Whooping Crane: The Robert Porter Allen Story. 

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