We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful KATHLEEN MORRIS. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with KATHLEEN below.

KATHLEEN , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I’ve taken a lot of risks over the years, but this one has had the most impact for me and started me down my path as an author. I have always been a writer, since I was a child writing mystery stories and fairy tales. But, life takes many turns and when I became an adult, school, marriage and children of my own took precedence. Years later, divorced, I made a successful career in medical administration, and while satisfying and supporting, it wasn’t enough. I taught writing part time as well at a local community college, and I would come home at night and once again, began to write my own stories. A couple were published, but I was nearly finished with a novel that I was excited about. It felt like my secret life.
One day at work, my new boss, someone I never clicked with at all, even after a year, called me into his office for one of our usual chats. He was a pompous man with rigid ideas. He stared at me for a second and said, “I don’t trust you.” I was stunned. How do you respond to that? I was good at my job, trusted and well-liked by everyone, except apparently, him. “Well? What do you have to say?” he asked. Something snapped in me and then it felt like a weight have been lifted from my shoulders. I stood up. “I quit,” I said, and I did. I had no support system except myself and some savings, and while it was scary, I felt better than I had in a long time.
I finished my novel two weeks later, and it was published a year later. That book was The Lily of the West and it won the Peacemaker Award for Best First Novel, the first of the six books I’ve written and published since.

KATHLEEN , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a writer, an author. I write novels, mostly historical, and I have become known for writing about strong indomitable women, then and now. There’s plenty of interesting and kind men in the books I write as well, along with villains, both male and female. Sometimes I have a completely fictional heroine, but others, like The Lily of West, are about real women and their lives. Lily is the story of Big Nose Kate, Doc Holliday’s long time romantic partner. My latest book is about Nellie Cashman, the adventurous woman prospector known as the Angel of the Cassiar, for saving a community of miners snowbound in the Canadian Cassiar in the 1870s. She was an incredible woman who had a legendary life, especially for her time. When I write about real people from the past, I do in depth research to make certain that the facts I’m basing my story on are correct. I feel that when I step into that river of the past, I make sure that I cross it using stepping stones that are cemented in fact. What I create from the water flowing between each of those stones is the story that I imagine for those people, for no one can know what happened to them in those depths. I follow this rule even when my characters are completely fictional. When it comes to historical detail, I try my best to learn every aspect of the places, dress, food, customs and correct maps of the area, for example, Dodge City in 1880, or Prescott, Arizona in 1883, or in Risk, my contemporary thriller, Durango, Colorado and Boise, Idaho.
A fellow writer has graciously said “nobody writes women with the fun and ferocity of Morris” and I loved that and I’m proud of it.
I firmly believe that historical fiction set in the West and nineteenth-century America is making a comeback. It used to be just about cowboys, bank robbers, gunslingers and mountain men. The only women who showed up were saloon girls, prostitutes or chill-blained pioneer women with five children. It’s a new day, and there were plenty of women who did interesting and extraordinary things, stories that never got told. It’s my mission to make sure they do and create stories that people want to read. Besides, I love it.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Pretty much everyone, including writers, believes that to be a successful and/or good author, you must follow the rules of the publishing industry. This means getting an agent who will then sell your book to a publisher, hopefully one of the big five, headquartered in New York. This is the mantra. It is also a lie.

I spent months submitting my book to many agents, agonizing over the query letter, waiting for responses. Not a one took me on as a client. Then, I began to look at smaller publishers that took manuscripts from writers themselves. A few responded but the offers weren’t great. Finally I signed a contract with a reputable one, and they published my first two books, and they sold reasonably well. My third book I went with a different small house, as I felt the quality of the books had declined. Sales were dismal.
I began researching heavily on other ways to do this, and decided to do it myself. The income was better, even without an advance. I have my own publishing house, Dunraven Press. I use an editor when I need one, have a cover designer, formatting software, and a publicist who helps market the books. It works very well for me.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I’ve always loved to write, in fact, I need to write. I think most creative people have a passion to do what they love. I believe that passion is the driving force behind the creation of art, music, the written word and theater. We don’t do it for the money, because a Stephen King is an anomaly, but we do hope to earn enough to continue to do what we love.

For me, especially, I’m defiantly independent, and the lesson I learned early on in this work is to trust yourself. You don’t need some agent or publisher or gallery owner who’s going to make money from your endeavor that should be going in your pocket, or telling you that your work doesn’t meet their standards and change this or that. If they could do what you can, they would be if they had that same passion.

Believe in yourself. Your instincts are correct.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kathleenmorrisauthor.com
• Instagram: Kathleen Morris
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kay.morris.7545/ and www.facebook.com/kathleenmorrisauthor