Kay Kendall Guest Blog

My apologies to Kay Kendall for neglecting to post this SBS guest blog starting at midnight. Kay has some interesting things to say about extroverts and writing that even we introverts should pay attention to! And I LOVE her new cover. Don't you?

Covers can sell books, and I'm getting this one.

~ Jim

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Back in the day, when I was a young person trying to figure out what to do with my life, I knew that I wanted to write. There were, however, two problems that I foresaw. First, I believed I had nothing to say. Second, I knew I was too gregarious to sit in a room day after day, week after week, alone and writing. That didn’t compute. It was not me.

Flash forward a decade or so. By then I knew that I had things to say, plenty of them. I’d analyzed that earlier I doubted myself too much to write. I’d assumed that what I did have to say wasn’t worth much. So, my confidence had grown and I was almost ready to write.

Only almost. I still was too much of an extrovert to bury myself in a room and write and write and write, seeing no one for days on end, with the exception of my husband. (By this time my son was away at college.)

In the nineties (for that’s where we are in this tale by now) I took a job in my chosen profession of corporate communications that was strangely devoid of human contact. The proliferation of computers also meant that I could sit in a room, use email and the phone, and not have to be out and about doing my PR job as often as I had in the previous decade. In short, I grew accustomed to being holed up in a room, and I saw fewer and fewer people.

By the new millennium I was still working full-time at this position and also writing my first novel (safely squirreled away in a drawer now). Several years later I quit my job to write. Period. I spent two years polishing my second novel that became Desolation Row—An Austin Starr Mystery. It was published this spring by Stairway Press of Seattle.

On the road to publication I attended two Bouchercon conferences, the giant fan meeting that puts fans and mystery writers together. I marveled at how the authors hobnobbed with each other, gawked as I listened to them plan to meet up at future conferences. These were some of the chattiest people I’d ever seen. What was going on? What happened to my idea of an introverted writer who never peeked his or her nose out of the writing room?

I learned that the gang of folks who write suspense/mystery/thrillers/crime fiction were convivial and supportive and if I wanted to join the club, I should behave the same way. In quick order I began attending more book signings and conferences, making friends with more authors both in person and online, arranging to see them when I travelled to their towns for my books signings.

In fact, I became so busy with all this—plus the requisite constant promoting of my debut mystery online—that I had trouble carving out time to write my second book! What gives? What happened to that lonely authorial ideal that I once had?

The world of writers today—with the probable exception of literary novelists and perhaps poets—is so gregarious that it is a scene into which I fit comfortably. By one means or the other, we are all communicating up a storm. And I love it. My public relations first career has been a godsend, because I suffer no hang ups, as a few still do, about thinking it somewhat unseemly that authors should be caught trying to push their own books.

A few weeks ago I attended my first ThrillerFest in New York City. As part of the Debut Thriller Author Class of 2012/2013, I made a presentation on the final day of the meeting. As I sat at the head table on a raised platform, I gazed out over our audience and mused about how much the writing world has flip-flopped. Most of us “debuts” had already exchanged our contact data, planned to reunite at next year’s ThrillerFest, and vowed to read each other’s books.

Where once it was difficult for an extrovert to be a writer, now it is hard for an introvert to fit into this chatty, Tweeting, Facebooking universe of ours.

By the way, you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Goodreads, and my own website. What a world!

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AUTHOR BIO

Kay Kendall is an international award-winning public relations executive who lives in Texas with her husband, five house rabbits, and spaniel Wills. A fan of historical mysteries, she set her debut mystery during the Vietnam War, a key conflict of the last century not already overrun with novels.

International Thriller Writers (Debut Author Class 2012/2013)

kaykendallauthor.com/

www.facebook.com/KayKendallAuthor

http://www.linkedin.com/in/kaykendallmysteries

ABOUT DESOLATION ROW—AN AUSTIN STARR MYSTERY

In 1968 a young bride from Texas uses her CIA-honed skills to catch the real killer when her husband lands in a Canadian jail for murdering the draft-resisting son of a United States senator. 

No activist herself, Austin is homesick, drowning in culture shock, and now, her husband has been accused of murdering a fellow draft resister, the black-sheep son of a U.S. Senator. Alone and ill-equipped to negotiate in a foreign country, she is befriended by Larissa Klimenko, the daughter of Austin's Russian history professor. 

The Mounties aren't supposed to harass draft-age boys but the truth is very different, especially when political pressure is applied by both the victim's father and the Canadian prime minister's office. They may have a reputation for always getting their man, but Austin is convinced this time they have the wrong one. Once courted by the CIA, and a lover of mystery and espionage novels, Austin launches her own investigation into the murder. When ominous letters warning her to stop her sleuthing