Kathryn's Beach

One of the fun things about selling my books myself is that I know who my readers are. It wasn't that way before.

Someone I see regularly is reading Kathryn's Beach. It is fun to hear her comments. The latest one is that there isn't much dialogue. I admit, that is generally true in the beginning.

My writing style is not mainstream. Besides being literary in nature, there is that pesky first person present tense thing to get used to.

Quite honestly there are people who don't finish Kathryn's Beach. On the other hand, there are quite a few who do and are surprised with it. The industry standard is so firmly set that reading something out of the norm seems to be an awakening, sometimes an unsettling awakening.

The action is unconventional. It isn't physical action as much as the action of human development, and in Kathryn's case, human healing. The dialogue is there. It is tight. Plus a great deal of it is internal dialogue.

The books are a faux memoir, a genre that I made up. I had the sense of an old Kathryn sitting near a window on a rainy afternoon telling her story to someone much younger, perhaps a young woman version of Shasta, perhaps not.

There were complications to writing Kathryn's Beach. One of the most notable problems was to not write her too bold for the broken, reclusive person she was in the beginning. Even the decision to not tell her last name - that's right, her last name is not in Kathryn's Beach - was done to further accent how small she felt, a one name person.

How I left her in the end mirrored the beginning. Different setting and different companion was done deliberately. But in both the beginning and ending, there are just two people in the scene.

Betcha you didn't know all of that. If you've read Kathryn's Beach, make a comment about what you thought. Say anything you want (except details about what happens on Thanksgiving weekend, please). I won't delete any of the comments. I promise.