Jackson Kuhl's Blog

Happy Publication Day to The Island of Small Misfortunes. This book was a journey for sure. I wrote the bulk of it pre-pandemic, then finished it in the early months of 2020. The manuscript was a total mess until the very end, when suddenly everything fell into place like a game of Tetris.

I’ve discovered with time that every book I write is a reply to the previous one. A Season of Whispers, for example, resulted after I became burned out (temporarily) by Smedley and nonfiction in general, which led to a period where I mixed history and fiction. Likewise, with Island I wanted to lean more heavily into the metaphors and language of Season while chasing the ambiguity of history, both personal and otherwise. A friend said she caught Raymond Chandler vibes off protagonist Sequoia Owen, which I now see is the bleed-through from that emphasis on description by metaphor.

Many thanks to my publisher Regal House Publishing for believing in the book and to my publicist Layne Mandros at Books Forward PR for a great campaign. And how about that cover? I could not believe the artist created it in Starry Night Post-Impressionism, my absolute favorite painting style. My jaw dropped when I first saw it and still does.

All of my books are messages in bottles thrown into the ocean. May the scribbled note inside The Island of Small Misfortunes bring you some enjoyment.

A Season of Whispers is now available from Whitney & Post.

In the summer of 1844, Tom Lyman flees to Bonaventure, a transcendentalist farming cooperative tucked away in eastern Connecticut, to hide from his past. But one by one, Lyman's secrets begin to catch up with him, and Bonaventure has a few secrets of its own. Why did the farm have an ominous reputation long before its owners bought it? What caused the previous tenants to vanish? And who's playing the violin in the basement?

A Season of Whispers is a novel of Gothic mystery. You can learn more about it right here on Goodreads.