Kirsten West – Author

Blog

  • October Ends With a Draft of a New Novel

    What I’m Working On:

    The draft of my next new novel is complete. It was a whirlwind to get it written while marketing Unforgiveable, but so worth it. This new story will span a few several novels. I do love the new world and the characters in it and cannot wait to share it with you. The best part of creating a new novel is discovering what happens to the people as the story progresses. No matter how much I might plot, there are always unanticipated twists and turns. I will share more as editing progresses.

    Books By My Bedside:

    The winding story threads within a novel by John Crowley always transport me to a different world. Sometimes the words, the phrases, the meaning of his writing force me to slow down and read the glorious passages again and again. It is yet another of the biggest examples of an unfair world that he is losing his ability to write a full-length book as he ages. Little, Big was the first novel of his that I came across. I still pull it out when inspiration strikes to open it to a random page. It seems no matter which page I pick, the perfect prose leads to a perusal of the Oxford English Dictionary. Right now I am working through Aegypt. No telling how long I will sit with it before I am ready to stop rereading and put it away.

    Here is a list of other delights I discovered this month:

    • The Midnight Bookshop by A. James
    • The Serviceberry by R. W. Kimmerer
    • Dr. No by P. Everett
    • Adora and the Distance by M. Bernardin
    • Greenteeth by M O’Neill
    • The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs by R. Black

    Life in the Bungalow:

    The elderberries ripened at the end of summer, so I spent a couple of weekends making syrup and canning. I made the mistake of reading a magazine article with instructions for making elder jelly. Jellies are the bane of my existence, and I am half convinced that those packets of Sure-Jell must have nothing but sugar in them. Ever optimistic, I gave it a whirl and, you guessed it, ended up with slightly thicker elderberry syrup. Ahh well, I will try again next year.

    The racoon tribe is frequenting our garden again this year, helping themselves to tomatoes and teeny tiny baby pumpkins and squash. So, we pick the tomatoes green and ripen them in the kitchen. There is not much that can be done to deter a raccoon pack. Long ago I had a wonderful lab mix who fearlessly treed masked yard bandits when they held midnight feasts in our vegetable patch. My current dog is about half the weight of a raccoon and fearful of everything from water to grass. I suppose it is a fortunate preservation instinct given her size.

  • Unforgiveable Is Out! (and the next series is around the corner)

    What I’m Working On:

    This week, my long journey towards self-publishing my first novel finally came to an end. The story of Elie and her struggles to come to grips with her past and find a way towards future happiness is out in the world where you can read it on Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, Smashwords, Kobo, and even request it from your local library through Overdrive and The Palace Project. It is seriously strange to have this long activity finally over.

    On a positive note, floating Unforgiveable out into the world meant I could choose something to celebrate with, and so today I began playing Tales of the Shire. I would like to say that I planned the publication and release date of Unforgiveable to match the release date of Tales of the Shire, a game I have been waiting years to play, but that would be a lie. It just ended up a happy accident.

    My work time is now split between marketing and the drafting of my next book series. I have nearly completed the first draft of the first book in this series. This is an exciting adventure. Written for both young adults and those of us who are young at heart still. There is mystery. There is magic. There are tons of struggles. There is alternative history and a world-famous university. There is even a bit of science. But overall, it is a story of one young woman and her ability to make a life for herself in a world that is slowly collapsing. After I get through my impossibly messy first draft and start to clean things up, I will begin sharing sneak peeks with everyone who is on my email list.

    Books By My Bedside:

    I generally devour anything by T.J. Klune. His heart and kindness overpowers anything he writes, and it seems we share a desire for found family. So, I sat down one afternoon and began reading The Bones Beneath My Skin. I wasn’t even able to take a breath until I finished two days later. You can be certain when reading a book by T.J. Klune that everything will work out right in the end. Along the way there will be sadness and loneliness, and maybe even something terribly evil to overcome. But in the end, someone very kind will have come along and everything will be okay.

    Here is a list of the other delights I discovered this month:

    • James by P. Everett
    • La Belle Sauvage by P. Pullman
    • I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf, by G. Snyder.
    • William of Newbury by M. Oeming
    • Full Moon Coffeeshop by Mochizuki
    • Atlas of Unexpected Places by T. Elborough
    • Tilt by E. Patee

    Life In The Bungalow:

    While it is definitely summer out here in California, for some reason this year has been unseasonably cool with a welcome and distinct lack of smoke. I am knocking on wood just now as I write this because I am pretty certain that after the post publishes, somehow our neighborhood will become a hot and smoky mess once again. So for now, I’m enjoying the welcome absence of air conditioner clatter.

    Sadly, the cool weather leads to tomato plants with fruit that won’t ripen. I have considered the idea of going outside during the day with a hair dryer to coax them to finish growing, but that requires finding an extension cord, which, if you knew the state of my basement, you would know was a fruitless activity.

    We have tried for years to get milkweed to grow in our little patch, and this year we hit pay-dirt. As a result, every afternoon while we eat lunch, we watch the monarch butterflies congregating and looking for the most optimal spots to lay their future generations. Sadly, the aphids found our milkweed right around the same time that the butterflies did and so I placed an order, and on Monday, I will unleash a ravenous horde of ladybugs who will, with any luck, feast until the very last aphid meets its maker.

  • Release of Unforgiveable in July

    What I’m Working On:

    I continue my wild quest to self-publishing my first fiction book. The marketing around fiction books is so very different from math textbooks. Writing that, I realize that it probably evokes a universal ‘no, duh!’ from you as you read this. But here, in the middle of the tornado that is the culmination of 4 years of hard work I feel like Dorothy. I could come out in Kansas, or Oz. It’s anyone’s guess at this point. Still, I resist the little voice in my head telling me it would be so much easier to delete all the files and walk away, hoping no one noticed I even attempted this book. I have come this far. The book, the story really, called out to be written. It haunted me for years, and positively poured out once I got started. I feel as if the characters are all my friends now, except the evils ones. Their well-deserved fate was, well, well-deserved and you have to read the story to know what happens.

    As I was writing, I realized that not many thrillers are set in the San Francisco Bay Area. Plenty take place in San Francisco, but further down the bay, in cities that are perfect settings for exciting, tense stories from which the best and the worst of humanity bubble to the surface, there is not much available literature. Given my familiarity with the area (born and raised in Palo Alto), it was a natural setting for me to explore.

    Books by my Bedside:

    I have discovered some wonderful books this month. I think the most exciting is Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine, the first in a YA steampunk fantasy series about a boy who loves books in a world that has controlled and banned ownership of physical copies. Written over a decade ago, it feels to me prescient of where we are headed now.

    The No-Waste Kitchen Garden by K Elzer-D is a fascinating and actionable guide to using up all the little bowls that your family uses to hold nuts and snacks and condiments and filling them with all the things they dislike eating like beet greens, celery, and turnip greens. Sadly for them, the project that came out of reading this fantastic book is still going strong.

    Here is a list of the other delights I discovered this month:
    • The book of the Frog by Sally Coulthard
    • The River has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
    • The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohilleben
    • Onibi by C Brun
    • Lagom by N Brantmark

    Life in the Bungalow:

    Spring is in full force here, in fact summer somehow peeks through about once a week to warn us. To remind us to enjoy the mid-70s weather while we can.

    We ended up getting rain at just the right time, finally, to induce a bumper crop of pomagranets, apricots, artichokes, bedstraw, and thistles to spring forth as the days warmed.

    I spent weeks and weeks patiently nursing seedlings of all kinds, from vegetables to herbs and even a few flowers. Every morning, all through the winter, I pulled cardboard egg cartons, filled with said seedlings and a bit of potting soil, out of the laundry basket I sacrificed for the project, laid them out on the kitchen/dining table, watered them gently with a misting bottle, and opened the kitchen curtains to expose them to enough light to happily grow. Each evening I repeated the process in reverse so the freshly watered seedling babies could be tucked cosily, stacked in the laundry basket, one egg carton upon the other and put into a dark spot in the living room. This went on for months with great succeess. Until I made the fatal mistake of planting them outside. I continued to water my seedling babies three times a day, but sadly everything withered away except for two pumpkin plants and 5 squashes. So it goes. There is definitely something I do not yet know about growing vegetables, but there is always next year to try again.

  • First New Novel Coming Soon!

    New novel. That sounds so exciting every time I say it aloud. In truth, Unforgiveable is my first novel and I am super excited to share it with you. The pre-order will begin in June and publication is set for July 29, 2025.

    Unforgiveable By Kirsten West Cover Reveal 1 a new novel

    We are finalizing the cover, to be revealed during the pre-order, and I cannot wait to share it. Here is just a peek at the bottom part of the cover…

    Check back for more details as they are announced, and prepare for a whirlwind of a story!

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    That’s it for now.