Going On Tour!

Welcome my friends!

Here to report that I have several speaking engagements coming up this fall and winter. Please check out my Events page for more details. I had the great opportunity to do historical research at many fantastic institutions over the 2 years it took me to finish my MA thesis. Now I’m going on tour to tell everybody under the sun about the untold history of 19th century New Hampshire sex workers.

This project was intensely emotional, and not just because I had a baby in the middle of the whole thing. I went into this with a liberated feminist frame of mind and ended up hitting the historical brick wall of reality at speed. I was surprised by the tragedy that I found: murder, infanticide, and human trafficking, as much as I was delighted to find madams who made enough money to pursue divorce from abusive husbands and streetwalkers who defied the statistical odds to live happy lives.

Sharing this with you, all of you, and anybody who will listen is so important to me. They say that a man does not die while his name is still spoken, so I am here, humbly, with archival dust on my hands, to put this forgotten piece of New Hampshire history back into the wider narrative of our state. It is a story that deserves to be told and remembered.

Behind the scenes writing on Stella and the Secret Stars continues.

All my best,

Kim

Captured by Jumanji: Or, Where Have I Been This Whole Time?

*Slams sideways into the chat*

Hello my friends and welcome back!

I am officially resurrecting this website from the dead, for real this time. A lot has transpired since this blog went radio silent in 2019, although to be honest it was getting to be pretty damn quiet before that. For one, the Pandemic clotheslined us all out of nowhere, for second, my wife and I kicked the trauma out of our house and have now sufficiently recovered, for third, I entered–and finished!–grad school with my MA in History & Archives, and for fourth, we also got 2 other cats for a total of three and also I had a baby. I realize that this is very much like an Ao3 excuse post but now that I can breathe, really breathe, we’re starting this thing up again.

Most of the old posts have been left untouched, except the early reviews that weren’t very professional, which I’ve deleted. I’ve had a lot of experience to weather me and my writing now, and I have a better handle on my writing voice as well as a better head on my shoulders. The world has changed enormously in the last few years and so have I, but I never really gave up on writing or history. I’m hoping to publish my thesis as a full history book and continue my research into other avenues to support that. I’ll be giving a couple talks locally on my topic, which is historical prostitution, and the dates will be posted on the events page.

In addition, I’ve decided it’s time to focus in on the future of my fiction writing. Working corporate has not worked out for my and now that grad school is done, I’m ready for something n ew. Toymaker is still here, but my real love is science-fiction, come to find out, so moving forward I’ll be taking Stella and the Secret Stars into fully polished mode for submission to a literary agent for traditional publishing. If that falls through, then I’ll continue on with self-publishing as originally planned. As promised over a decade ago, all chapters of Toymaker will remain available and free here and on my Patreon, which I am also going to go resurrect shortly.

Stella and the Secret Stars is finished but for redoing the chapters at the beginning and 2 editting passes. It’s blossomed into a 7-book story plot, with spin-off tales, and I’m excited to share more with you as things start to happen.

Rather than do influencer/vlog work, I’ve decided it’s just going to be this site and Patreon. I’m not really interested (or good at) marketing and I’m not a fan of AI or big tech. I’m also not going to jump on the romance or dark romantacy train, we have enough of that going around as it is.

I’m not here to provide a cookie-cutter book that AI could churn out in seconds. I arrive back to this writing journey with experience, steadiness, a metric shit-ton of trauma to unpack, to do what I do best: telling stories. I am going to tell the stories that only I can tell, that are made with love, and come straight from the human soul, no machines necessary.

It’s been a jungle.

It’s been hell.

But I’m still alive. See you soon, my friends.

Kim