K.D. Kinney's Blog

So, it has been a sluggish few months, hasn’t it? Life here is a little stressful. But most of my family are essential workers. So they go to work, I’m here on my own most of the day. You’d think I’d be all creative. I thought I’d be all creative and I would get all the things done but that is not the case.

The first spring I’ve had when all the busy has been wiped off the calendar and I can’t seem to find any mojo. But from what I’ve been reading here and there, that has become part of the new normal. No spring cleaning happening here. Almost no point when no one is coming over to come inside the house except the family.

I did refinish a few pieces of furniture. I have more to do and the tree in the back has decided to all out dump all its bits of flowers and little helicopters all over everything every day. Then all that mess gets tracked inside and makes me want to scream at the tree because that’s interacting with something during the day besides the dogs and the cats.

I had a few weeks off watching grandkids. I just started watching 2 again this week. We will see when I gain the third again on Tuesdays.

My daughter that’s a senior in high school is still struggling with school work. Our district really pulled back on expectations. Her big issue is she doesn’t want to do any of it. If she doesn’t do any of the work, she misses out on some college credits and the grades she had before she left school are the ones she’ll keep and a few of them weren’t great. So here’s hoping I can motivate that kid to get things done. This has really sucked for her so much.

We also haven’t rescheduled our daughter’s wedding celebration. I’m hoping she’ll still fit in her wedding dress whenever we manage to plan it. Ha!

I’m working on Enduring the Journey: Dale’s Tale. It has been slow. I’ve been so distracted with Coronavirus everything. Fortunately where I am, it is calming down and it actually wasn’t very widespread. We have testing in place now for the virus and antibodies. So there’s far more good news right now than bad. This whole fed my anxiety in the worst way. I stay home as much as possible while everyone goes to work and comes home. The other thing that’s hard is writing an apocalyptic tale when the world is imitating art. I really struggled for a bit when conversations my characters were having were conversations couples could have today.

I am working. Slowly still but it won’t take so long to get this next book out but I didn’t manage to tackle it in April like I hoped. I’m aiming for May.

So I hope everyone is healthy and safe wherever you are.

I don’t know why I’m so drawn to this phrase. But it really sums up what our family has been trying to cope with as new restrictions have been put in place weekly for at least a month now.

My third daughter has been engaged to be married since Thanksgiving. She graduated from college in December. In January she spent most of the month out of the country in Cambodia and Thailand just as the Coronavirus was taking hold of China and starting to spread in those countries as well. She even had to stop in South Korea on her way home. We were a little alarmed about her contracting the virus before her arrival and somehow she was just ahead of the worst of the outbreak.

Things seemed okay here. It wasn’t here yet. So we were debating dates. She wanted April 4th and I had to keep her off that weekend because my youngest daughter had two big events on the 3rd and 4th. But she liked the idea of a 04-04-2020 date. She settled on April 11th instead.

Being the good little End of the World writer that I am, I started seeing what was headed our way. I bought paper goods first, stocked up on baking and canned goods next. The dogs and cats needed food as well so I stocked up on that. Then I cycled through the stores once more, long before toilet paper was a hot commodity.

I warned the family of what was coming as things started to hit the U.S. Our state was one of the last 4 to get a confirmed case. However, I already knew we were going to head into problems with the wedding. I fortunately had a feeling that my daughter needed to hustle to get her marriage license. They were going to get it that Friday but couldn’t. That’s when our mayor decided to do the stay at home order. We were a little stressed knowing the courthouse was closing. On Monday they couldn’t get one in our county, they had to go to the smaller courthouse in the next county to get it. But they got it barely in time.

We were also invited to two weddings on March 20 and 22 in two different states. One daughter wanted to fly to Tennessee from Utah after the wedding there. I knew it was risky. Either she could get the Coronavirus flying there and back, or flights were going to be restricted. In the end she decided she didn’t want to chance it. Good thing too. Because there was that earthquake in Utah. It sounded like the airports opened back up. But things were getting more restricted. My niece’s wedding had the venue close on them the week of the wedding, right before the Earthquake and the location she was getting married made some restrictions where only 10 people could attend. They did that part. We are waiting for them to schedule the reception.

The other wedding in Tennessee did happen. Not very many people were able to go, though. Most of my sister’s family that was supposed to attend from Texas couldn’t go. But the venue didn’t shut down. They had about 35 attend but had been expecting over 80 people if circumstances hadn’t changed things the way they did.

Presently, we have a stay at home order in place from not only our mayor but also our governor that was enacted last week. Waiting for the 11th was seemingly pointless. I asked my daughter- what if we just drove up the mountains somewhere and got your best friend’s boyfriend to marry you? He actually married the best friend’s mom and her new step-father. Well, that put a bug in her ear. She let me know that’s what she wanted to do but her fiance’s dad was going to do whatever it took to be able to marry them.

So on Sunday, that’s what we did. Only the immediate family from both sides drove up to a beautiful spot next to the reservoir with mountains surrounding us. The rain from that morning was gone, the ground was dry, the sky was beautiful as fluffy white clouds covered the sun occasionally, the temperature just a little chill when the sun was gone. But we had ourselves a little wedding. My daughter didn’t wear the dress we bought. She wore the dress she used at Halloween as she dressed as Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. It was simple, intimate and perfect considering the circumstances. Cars on the road drove by slowly, some honked, someone recorded us hopefully because they thought it was special. It was.

The young man she married is the sweetest and kindest man. I couldn’t have asked for a better companion for my daughter. And she almost didn’t give him a chance at first. She’s almost embarrassed about that now because she loves him so much and knows he’s exactly what she needed. We are practically our own modern day version of a Jane Austen novel or perhaps that and a blend of Little Women with my five daughters and myself.

I’m happy she’s married and can start her life with the man that she loves and without a doubt, I know he loves her maybe more than she loves him. Somehow hopefully we will get through this crazy pandemic with our health, all our loved ones with us, and plenty of toilet paper to go around.

#Coronawedding

It’s been so long since I have had my website up and also since I published a book. If there’s anyone left out there wondering “What happened to K.D. Kinney?” Well, life kind of kicked me in the butt. I have kept writing and working and editing stuff to death. And suddenly getting insecure and edited some more.

I have felt awful to leave people hanging. But I froze up after I wrote Enduring the Crisis. It gave me a crisis. Hmm, not sure why that happened. It was successful. I was also in a genre where people have strong views. I wasn’t used to the attention and I’m not one that wants it either. But I do like writing stories. Somehow I let that all get in my head and it was stressful. So I tried to tell myself- here, get at least one of your series finished. I have been working on the Endure series because it’s my best selling book. I have Enduring the Journey done-ish. I had to do some research I was putting off for far too long. Now I’m integrating that in and making sure things are technically accurate. Once that’s through, it will be handed off to some readers and proof-reader. By the way, Enduring the Journey is much longer than the first book.

I also have an in-between book that is another character’s point of view. It’s a novella and a good bridge between Book 2 and 3. I’m not gonna lie, I’m insecure about this book too. I won’t go into details but I’m going to have to get past that to get this book out there. It is completely written. It will need some more edits once I’m done getting Enduring the Journey pubished. The name of this novella will be Enduring the Journey- Dale’s story.

Enduring to the End has been started. I have half of it written. I wanted it done before I published book 2 but really, it has taken so long to do book 2 already, I just need to push it out there and get the final book out this year.

In the meantime, while I haven’t been publishing much, we have added three grandchildren to our family. I watch all three on Tuesdays now and I watch two some Thursdays. I love having them here but they are all at a high maintenance age. Before I was an author I watched kids. I’ve worked in day-cares, I worked at an elementary school, and I’ve run my own in home day care. I had a lot more energy back then because watching these kiddos is super hard some days.

We are about to have a wedding for my 3rd daughter. She graduated from college in December with a Materials Science and Engineering degree. My youngest is about to graduate from High School this May. She has kept me so busy it’s like having two kids still in school. I’m looking forward to having a spring where I’m not running to tennis matches and all the end of the year stuff that happens. You know what else this girl did? She won a pageant and that has been a year of added stuff to what was already crazy. As much as I have enjoyed watching my kids grow up, this mama is tired. I want to work more on my books and making readers happy. So I know there is a huge shift coming. Perhaps everyone that has been waiting for more books from me will be happy. That is if there’s anyone left that remembers me.

My website has moved to KDKinney.com. It looks very much the same but all my content will be over there for here on out.

Thank you for visiting.

It is exciting when you find another review and it is 5 stars! Super happy with that.

There’s a new Widget in my sidebar. If you are looking at my site on a phone or Kindle it is probably at the very bottom. It is a promotional website that I just joined to gain exposure for my books. If you would like to shop for something new to read while you wait for my latest release- ;)  you might want to hop over there and check it out.

As far as the mailing list goes- I’ve hit 2 snafus. So it will take me a little longer to get that going. This is the kids last week before school starts so there’s a little Last Hurrah going on this week and then I get busy on the writing and editing again.

Little by little I’m getting everything going. I’m on Goodreads now!

Next I will be working on a mailing list.

The August busy has taken over. With family in town, it has been really difficult to maintain my momentum in getting my writing work done. To add to it, I have a few kids getting ready to return to school. Once they start back, possibly I can get into a writing routine again. I’ll do what I can in the meantime.

The Legend of Little Sharpshooter has its first 4 star review on Amazon. It took me over a week to actually see the review. Not sure what the deal was there and it was very, very positive. So happy dance!

And Underground Book Reviews has it listed on their Pitch Perfect Picks website page.

Underground Book Reviews

I failed to check my rankings yesterday on The Legend of Little Sharpshooter. Darn it all. Today is not so bad. I’m sure it was better yesterday. It is #14 in Young Adult Westerns. Woo hoo! It is like in the 50s for both 19th century and United States. A couple of weird places to be ranked but I put them there.

I was thinking about doing a post that was not just “I’m writing this and here’s that.” The thought that came to mind was about diversity. I gave it a lot of thought when I added a few characters in my story. Back in the 1880s there was a lot of racism. Native Americans were being forced onto reservations. Many Chinese people were migrating here to start businesses of there own and it wasn’t easy. I didn’t want to focus on the negatives. With Westerns there are lot cliched tropes that have played out. Especially when they were popular in the 1950s and 1960s.

On Native Americans, I almost wrote a scene where Randy, Bronson and Trevor have a run-in with a tribe around the four corners area of the United States. I wasn’t comfortable with it. In that area there were two reservations combined together of two tribes that had been enemies for generations. It was almost like the government put them together so they would destroy each other. That history bothered me but it also added some conflict that could have been interesting as the three passed through the reservation. But it didn’t really help the story, I couldn’t portray the Native Americans in a way that I felt comfortable with so it was better to leave it out.

There are three Native Americans in The Legend of Little Sharpshooter though. The first is Cheveyo. He is a close friend of Randy’s pa. The second was a close friend of Trevors. The third was the woman at the trading post. She was married to a white man. In that situation, I guess I have some Cherokee Indian in me. It comes from a great grandma or a great great grandma that married a white man. So I guess she was a little homage to my family history. They were all people that helped Randy on her journey.

The Chinese that came over to settle here during the gold rush days in the west have always intrigued me. They weren’t all looking for gold. They were starting businesses and established small communities of their own. Where I live, just down the hill from my house is a part of town called Garden City. It was the Chinatown of Boise and was called that because of the beautiful gardens they kept. In The Legend of Little Sharpshooter, Randy’s leg is saved by a Chinese Healer. He treats her with acupuncture. From there I wanted Randy and Trevor to have some trust with their community and that is a pretty important near the end of the story.

I really tried to be sensitive to the portrayal of the diverse characters that made appearances in this novel. I don’t mean to offend by including those characters. They were important parts of what made the West what it was in those days. I really wanted to show the values that Randy’s pa and Trevor’s  nana taught them.

The other thing I didn’t want to be preachy about but it was so important for me to have in a young adult novel was the respect Randy had for her gun. How her pa taught her the value of human life. Guns totally had their place back then. It was a survival tool. Whether it was hunting for food or for protection they were a part of daily life back then. Annie Oakley wasn’t the only girl out performing in a sharpshooting competitions. There were others.

Just for the record, my own daughters, all five of them, know how to shoot.

I’m going to wrap this up. I’m excited over the rankings today. Also, know I’m trying to depict history and showing sensitivity at the same time.

So I did have some great news today. I’m so excited that The Legend of Little Sharpshooter was an Underground Book Review pick of the week!

Here is where you can check it out:

The Underground Book Reviews Blog

Facebook where I saw the announcement!

I’m sure if you try to click these links a week after this posts you won’t see the exciting news. I’m happy though. And motivated to get back to work.

Even though the release of The Legend of Little Sharpshooter has had a slow start, I’m still hard at work. I have lots of work I can put out and from what I’ve researched, that is the best way to be discovered.

I’m writing Part Three to High Pressure System and editing the first novel of The Children of Dragons. If I keep at it, we will have August releases for both as promised. I’ve been doing loads of research-Always. That book will have a wide release outside Amazon. I have 2 covers now for the series so far. Just so you know, book two is complete. It will need intensive edits like most of my work but it will be out soon after. So I will put that on my agenda for what’s next. The covers are perfect and I love them. Ravenborn is the artist and she has offered to create more if I need them for the series and I will. I have more than 3 books planned. I have to go into my files and figure out just how much of the series has been written. It is epic.

I will share the cover once we are in final editing, close to release.

So I just learned about this from Hugh Howey. You can follow authors on their author pages on Amazon. Here is mine or you can go follow Hugh instead.

My Author page with all my books

In the meantime, I sit at my laptop fearful my kitten is going to attack me again. I love kittens but this little guy is wild this morning. Now he’s in my arms. Boy is it hard to type.

I crammed hard for days to get a July release and it just squeaked in. Love this story so much.

The Legend of Little Sharpshooter on Amazon Now

Tapping fingers, waiting for first sale…