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

Kellie , appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

My hope is to tell stories that give the readers/listeners an escape from reality.
Life is already hard. Everyone needs a break from their troubles, and they turn to entertainment. Storytelling has been and will always be a form of entertainment, education, communication, and bonding. Being someone who not only has the imagination for fictional storytelling but also enjoys it, made fictional storytelling and writing the ideal job for me.

I realized that my love of stories came from the two men in my family; my grandfather and my uncle, who both share the same name. My grandfather is a social butterfly. He can and will talk to anyone about anything. But it is always some kind of story about something. Even the ones I’ve heard before, the way he gets into it, I’ll still just sit and listen. He’s always been a fast reader and devours books faster than he could get them. So I learned about reading from a very early age.

My uncle has been running TTRPGs since before I was born and loves Fantasy and Sci-Fi stuff. He, too, will sit and tell stories about any and everything. He started to let me borrow the Fantasy and Sci-Fi novels he read, and the more and more I read them, the more I realized that not only do I enjoy reading and listening to stories, but I wanted to create them too. He even eventually created and ran my first RPG game for me and my friends. I also attribute myself becoming a huge geek to him because he was “The cool uncle with cool toys and stuff”.

My mother wasn’t as much of a storyteller as they are, but she still loved to read and watch fictional shows and movies, especially Horror. She, too, let me borrow a book series. Between her and my uncle’s book recommendations, I realized what genre and style of storytelling I encompassed.

Ever since that realization, my brain has never stopped creating characters, plotlines, situations, and “telling stories”.

Kellie , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Besides being a storyteller, I am a Geek lol. I love video games, movies, TTRPGs, cosplaying, etc. Video games are an underrated form of storytelling, and one day I would love to say I wrote or helped write one. My favorite video games are Skyrim and Fallout 76, which is ironic because those games aren’t known for their strong storylines but rather for the open concept of creating your own as you go. Those games have helped me write and flesh out book characters by putting them in some “What if” scenarios that made me think out of the box. The first major cosplay I created (not the makeshift Halloween stuff from before I knew it was an amazing hobby genre) was a Nightingale from Skyrim, and I plan to have a Fallout-inspired cosplay soon.

I am also an animal lover. We currently have ten animals in the house. I was raised with lots of animals (my mother was also a Veterinary Technician, so I was also exposed to the medical side of animal care), and she was raised with animals, so my entire family is very animal-friendly. Luckily, I have a husband who loves animals as much as I do, and we both get to enjoy having a zoo, haha. I used to work part-time at a pet store and have gotten about half of our critters that way.

Even though I love writing and telling stories, I never thought I would be published one day. “Back then”, the only option was to have a publishing house pick you up, and those chances were low, no matter what the Hallmark RomComs said. Within the last decade, self-publishing became a new option but there was limited information. I’m not business minded so there is a lot I still don’t know about publishing and that started to discourage me from ever trying. My first published book, A Werewolf’s Touch, was my first leap into publishing aka selling stories, but making money didn’t matter. I was publishing something I created with my mind and I was proud of it. I pressed the upload button for myself and to see my words p[printed in a real book and not just something I printed from my printer.
After years of learning, researching, and networking, I saw where the improvements needed to be to not only be a good storyteller, but a good writer as well. Having an amazing story isn’t enough if it’s physically hard to read though. But I remain proud of my first book being out there and enjoyed by strangers around the world. And I can’t wait to share the others I have when they are refined and ready.

My day job is working part-time at a local, female-owned independent bookstore. With her business knowledge of bookselling plus helping with Author signings and other events, I am gaining valuable insight into the retail and networking side of being a published author and what the differences are between self and traditional publishing.

How’d you meet your business partner?

My partner in life and business, my wonderful husband, and I met in high school. One of the things that drew me to him was his talent for storytelling. Every day, he would tell me a story of something that happened in his life during our lunch period. Soon, eating and telling stories became our daily activities that brought us joy and entertainment.
Now, after 20+ years together, we have had various separate projects. But it was when we started telling stories “together” that we really became excited about being storytellers and finding our preferred medium to share them. We helped drive each other to publish our first projects which we are extremely proud of and they were only the beginning of our creative journeys. We now have multiple projects that include both our storytelling styles that we can’t wait to publish and share.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative storyteller is being able to experience the reactions of people.
One of my fondest memories is sending a story to a co-worker of a former job I had at that time and getting a text message at 2 am in regards to how she was feeling about the story. How emotional she felt in that moment and made her stay up late to see what would happen next. I get all smiley just thinking about it.

Now that I have also dipped a toe into voice acting, hearing people laugh and enjoy my portrayal of the characters during live listens or seeing the comments fills me with joy. To know I was able to evoke an emotion out of someone and experience them enjoying themselves is fulfilling and makes me happy.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/author_kellie_n_hill
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorKellieNHill
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellienhill/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/KellieNHill
• Other: Book on Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/1945642122
  Threads: https://www.threads.net/@author_kellie_n_hill?xmt=AQGzH5hSyPi65IXdrobf_-f4sag80BOOw5gGuh1HsthvHiY