Hello Readers
and Friends!
Allow me to share a bit about myself,
without forgoing the mention of my best friend,
Pudding the cat.
My Philosophy
I think there's something to be said of writers. Some of us have the delusional notion that writing somehow changes people. People in our lives may have taught us that writing is essential, that storytelling is essential, and the act of telling stories is innate to being human.
I am guilty of this belief.
I believe in the spark of adventure, the spirit of Life which stories would encourage us to feel so strongly that our feet slip into a world beyond. I believe stories make connections between people, they make us love and learn: they're exciting. They give me hope.
But, I also believe in dragons. So, what do I know.
I could lose myself to writing for days at a time, and that's no stretch of my imagination: I've timed it, as has my mom, wondering when I was going to eat next.
I believe stories do that to people. They engulf and entice us. Writing them, I feel entirely satisfied.
If I were given a choice, and if it were easier on me, I'd write much more short fiction. However, it seems I am doomed to devote, most bitter-sweetly, hundreds of hours and pages to characters whose very real fabrics demand more weaving and embroidery on my part. They'll take no sore back or fingers for an excuse.
About Me
I was born and raised on the Central Coast of California, but for all of the perfect sunny days I adore stormy weather and consequently find it in my writing often.
It was on the sandy shores of Dillon Beach that I first began writing a novel in my grandparents' trailer. I was 13 years old. That novel will never see the light of day and now lives a prisoner in my oldest Google Drive folder, but we all start somewhere. It is because of that trip that I love the smell of paper, especially old and mildewy paper, I think cows make great company for writing, and I prefer thrift stores with a used-literature section.
I've since traded notebooks for a computer, having never been able to keep up with my own thoughts, and determinedly switched to a program with an auto-save feature in high school (for reasons you may be wise to guess). I've also developed calluses on my wrists from writing "too" often and for "too" long. I admit it's become one of my favorite features about myself, if anyone asks, like how some people can wiggle their ears.
I feel a special romance for horror, and I mean the dark, hungering, occultish kind, as well as a strangely antithetical but appropriate love of writing gritty realism about farms. My soulmate is fantasy: the stories of things which I will never find here, but ever will on the page. (I love poetry as well, but no poor soul need read that.) I read a quote somewhere that validates the importance of fantasy in my life: if non fiction is learning through facts, fiction is learning through imagination.
I have been used as an adjective in writing workshops, which is a fun way to be memorialized:
'A hundred striped umbrellas are pitched up like carny tents, and out tumble children, children upon colorful children cartwheeling from the shade of their tents to the water.'
That's what I wrote.
"Well." The professor paused for effect. "That's very Kathryn, isn't it?"
As mentioned, I do have a cat named Pudding. She's brilliant. There are other cats, but she is mostly mine.
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