Kellynch: Sequel to Jane Austen's Persuasion (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781517078669)

When describing my life, I think Douglas Adams said it best, "I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I have ended up where I needed to be." Books have always been a large part of my meandering. I grew up on a ranch in southeastern Idaho and my friends were a mixed and rowdy bunch. Louis L'Amour told me tales of the west, but Edgar Rice Burroughs took me to the jungles of Africa. Sir Author Conan Doyle walked with me through the fog-covered streets of London, and Jane Austen taught me to be a gentleman. I read several other authors but I was fourteen when I met the man. Sitting in an English class, I chose a book from a required reading list and I was introduced to Ernest Hemingway. His book, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," allowed Mister Hemingway, Robert Jordan, and I to fight in the Spanish Civil War and I never left Idaho. When I closed the back cover, I knew that no matter whatever else I did, I would be a writer. Even today, when I think back, I am still in awe of how Hemingway's words touched the soul of an adolescent boy. I entered the Army a year after high school and stayed in uniform for the next two decades. The military offered me the opportunity to live my own adventures separate from the ones I lived vicariously in books. While in uniform, I worked in a variety of fields, Infantry, Military Police, and Military Intelligence. I worked on a psychiatric ward and later at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. I took trips to Mexico, Canada, and twice to Germany. I have visited the forty-eight contiguous states and desperately want to see the other two. I started to write and failed. Repeatedly, I would start a story, only to end it and discard it as it sounded too much like the works of one of my friends. I went through periods when I refused to read, because I was frustrated and angry with those friends. Those friends who were what I wanted to be. Fifteen years ago, I got sick. Deathly sick and as I got better and my brain got stronger, stories, characters, and plots started to form. I found my voice and I published my first book, a novella called "Dear Emma," in February 2012. I used to feel strange telling people, "I got better and now I hear voices," but the statement is accurate. I feel I am in good company as several authors have made such references. As I said at the beginning, I am exactly where I need to be.