Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kathleen Donnelly. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Kathleen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

For me, success is doing what I love every day. I’ve been so lucky because I’ve never had a “normal” career. In fact, my career path is very different from most. I earned my degree in journalism, but I knew that wasn’t what I wanted to do for a living. I had grown up riding horses and soon I had a small training business. Even though I loved horses, I knew this wasn’t my path in life.

A few years later, I was offered a chance to work K-9s for a private company called Sherlock Hounds Detection Canines. The company was a pro-active drug dog business that helped keep schools safe by utilizing friendly dogs to detect drugs, alcohol and gunpowder. I fell in love with the work and in 2010 I became part owner in the business.

While I loved what I was doing and felt like I was making a difference, writing remained a passion. I loved reading mysteries and I decided I would write a mystery with a K-9. I used my background working the dogs to help develop my story, main character and fictional K-9. I would wake up early to write before I headed out to work the dogs. I loved writing fiction and when schools shut down in 2020 due to COVID, I had a chance to experience being a full-time writer. I finished my first book, CHASING JUSTICE, and queried it in the spring of 2020. By August I had signed with my agent and by 2021, with her help, I was under contract. For me this was a huge success and a dream come true.

Now, my dogs and I are retiring and I will be writing full-time. I love my “new” job and I look forward to writing more books in the National Forest K-9 series as well as starting other series. While this all sounds like it was an easy path, it took many years of rejection, writing and re-writing to sign with an agent and eventually publish. For me, what it took to be successful was never giving up. It would have been easy to have quit along the way, but I also knew that I would write even if my books were never published, and that too is success.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

As I mentioned in the previous question, I didn’t take a traditional route to publishing. But I’m glad I didn’t as I have learned how to run my own small business, how to collaborate with clients and so many other great lessons along the way.

Books captivated me from an early age. As a kid, my parents read to me and as soon as I could read on my own, I bugged them to take me to the library. I soon discovered that even as a little kid, there were things I didn’t like about some of the books I read. My Mom would tell me to go write my own story. So, I did. I think I wrote my first story as a third grader and it was about my chickens. I can’t remember what adventures my chickens had, but I knew I loved writing the short story.

In high school, the librarian introduced me to Mary Higgins Clark. Her books hooked me on the mystery/suspense genre. I remember thinking, “I’d love to write a book like this someday.” I also had an English teacher in high school who encouraged my writing. After college when I was training horses, I started dabbling with writing a book, but it was non-fiction. After several rejections, my husband said, “Why don’t you write a fiction book? You keep talking about it.” I decided he was right so I started in on my first fiction book. By the time I finished the first draft, I knew this was what I wanted to write. I loved creating characters, a world for those characters, and researching and learning about different things like law enforcement and the military. That book was rejected many, many times and looking back, I’m glad it was. It taught me so much about the publishing industry, book structure, character development and more.

When I started writing CHASING JUSTICE, I had a feeling that this book was going to be published as everything I had learned started to click. I still ended up starting over on CHASING JUSTICE several times, but by the time I finished it in the spring of 2020, I thought I had a book that an agent might be interested in. And I was right, as my agent made an offer to represent me in August of 2020.

I realized that incorporating the K-9s into my book was fun. I took what I had learned from my business and created a fictional dog character—Juniper, a two-year-old Malinois. I also wanted to show how the setting could be its own character. Growing up and living in Colorado, I learned from an early age that the mountains could be beautiful, but also dangerous. I created a fictional National Forest and my main character, Maya Thompson, a U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement Officer and K-9 handler, quickly came to life. She loves the mountains the way I do and she faces many of the challenges that come with working in a National Forest.

I love to escape through books and as I’ve written these books, I’ve come to realize that I love writing a great story for reader entertainment and enjoyment. I have enjoyed sharing my K-9 knowledge while creating suspense along with some romance. When I hear readers say they couldn’t put my book down, that makes my day.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I love that I get to create my own worlds and characters. I feel like my characters are real and when I’m driving in the mountains, I’ll pass them on the road. I also love giving readers a chance to escape into a fun story and share what it’s like to work a K-9. At the same time, I had an opportunity to gain more experience about K-9 work and training since my main character, Maya, and her K-9 Juniper are law enforcement. I don’t have that background and it has been fun to interview other K-9 handlers and even a U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officer and K-9 handler. His work is fascinating to me. I love researching jobs and learning about different career paths. Recently, I met with a victim advocate to learn more about his job so I could realistically portray it in my next book. Listening to the amazing work he does and how he helps people inspires me. I wouldn’t have met him if I hadn’t written books.

Another rewarding aspect of being a writer is “traveling” to different parts of Colorado or the world through my imagination. I might be writing about an avalanche in the middle of winter when it’s actually July and a hundred degrees outside. When I sit down and write, I get to “see” the world through the eyes of my characters. It’s fun and fascinating.

I also love the writing community. I’ve met so many supportive authors who have helped “newbies” like myself. I know I wouldn’t have the readership I do today without their mentorship and support. My goal is to give back as much as I can to the writing community. I figure helping others is a way to thank those who’ve helped me.

I’d say the last rewarding aspect is the fact that I am now making my living from writing, something I love doing and I’m passionate about, is the icing on the cake.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When you want to publish a book, there’s many rejections along the way. You are told “no” many, many times. Over the years, I’ve compared it to getting bucked off a horse. Sometimes it really hurts, but you get back on. I always joke that at least I never had to get an X-ray at the ER from a book rejection.

One such memory of rejections was at a writer’s conference where I put the first page of my novel in the slush pile read. That first page is then read aloud in front of a room full of conference attendees. Agents and editors sit at the front of the room and they will listen to the first page. If they like it, they’ll say, “Whoever wrote this, please come talk to me.” If they don’t like it, they say, “Stop.”

I had put my first page in the slush pile read and was so excited to hear what the agents would say. I was certain this was the beginning of a great book. All the pages before mine received invitations to speak to the agent or great feedback. Then my page was read and after the first sentence, all the agents said, “Stop!”

They ripped apart my opening page. It was everything I could do to not leave. I figured at least I could count on no one knowing it was my book. I was comforting myself with that thought until a conference attendee turned around and said, “Isn’t that your book?” She said it loud enough that everyone looked at me. I shrugged and admitted it was mine. I told myself to stay strong. Later that day a well-known best-selling author approached me. She told me that she liked what I had written. She told me to keep going and ignore those agents. She mentioned that she’d had similar things happen and now she was a successful author. The fact that she sought me out to tell me that still means so much to me.

I took her advice and kept writing. This moment taught me a great lesson that when you receive a rejection, you work harder. Now when I’m struggling with something whether it’s writing a book or coming up with the next story idea, I think of that moment and tell myself to just keep going.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kathleendonnelly.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorkathleendonnelly/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorKathleenDonnelly/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleen-donnelly-84552545
• Twitter: @KatK9writer
• Other: Amazon Author Link: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Kathleen-Donnelly/author/B099S92QPJ

  Bookbub Author Link: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/kathleen-donnelly

  Goodreads Author Link: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22280955.Kathleen_Donnelly

Image Credits

For Main Author photo and the picture of me with the 4 dogs, please credit PiperAnne Worcester Photography.