Sorry I’ve been absent lately. I have been trying to finish the last book in the Harrell Family Chronicles series, Remy’s Dilemma.
This book should have been out before now but sometimes life gets in the way. No excuses but I do think it will be worth the wait. I hope you agree.
Dive into the town of Leeward one more time and get your goodies at Goodie Galore Bakery. Roxanne and her business partner, Kendra have opened their bakery and are making a sweet impact on the town.
Get you grub at Hole in the Sky Pub where the beer is out of this world. Ethan quit college to brew beer but don’t worry, who needs a fourth degree.
Janie and Mike are finally tying the knot if their wedding doesn’t go up in flames.
If Sothy doesn’t run away, she might make a success of her new craft store.
Remington Harrell is the oldest of the Harrell siblings and the one expected to fix everything. Whether it’s a friend accused of murder or saving the local phosphate plant there’s nothing he can’t do, except relationships. After his last girlfriend threatened to kill his sister and sell her child on the black market, he’s been a little apprehensive about dating. With cyber-attacks on the phosphate plant escalating along with threats to the employees, Remy worries his family and friends will be the next targets. When he realizes the threat comes from someone in Sothy’s past. They must team up to stop the cyber-attacks. But if Sothy isn’t willing to share her secrets, can Remy trust her with his heart?
Humans resist change… why? Are we preprogramed to want the familiar? As cavepeople, we took comfort and refuge in the familiar. If everything stayed the same, we stayed alive. But in modern times why are we still resisting change? Whether it’s changing our hairstyle or leaving a dead-end job, most of us put up with the out-of-date style and the hated job because we fear change. Or maybe we’re too lazy to make that change. I mean, really, change means we have to make an effort to do something different.
I don’t like change. Familiar is easy and requires less effort. Pull the hair up in a ponytail or wrap it in a headband, it’s easier than trying to decide what style I want. But recently I made a change…I changed genres. This wasn’t a quick change. I’ve been taking classes for several years and planning this story and series for just about as long. Switching from romantic suspense to cozy mystery doesn’t seem like that big a difference, but when you go from contemporary to Victorian era, and make your main character a teenager, well, that is a rather BIG change.
Something different means research, a lot of research, preparation, planning, and extra effort—at least that’s what I discovered when I decided to switch genres. For the past year I’ve been studying the cozy mystery genre. I discovered some great YouTube videos, one of my favorite authors to follow is Jane Kalmes, the Fiction Technician https://youtu.be/GNR0g60m0EI. I also researched the Victorian Era, everything from how to build a forge to a lady’s dress, to inventions and killers of the era. YouTube is a great place to start but when I needed information on steamer ships, I had to pull out the big guns and go to my friend, HCRW President, Cyn Haden who is a naval historian. I only needed one tiny piece of information to make my story believable, but I needed to check my facts before I could go any further.
How resistant to change are you? Are you adventurous or do you like the status quo? What do you do to combat boredom and shake things up?
Kaitlyn Kalor is a 9-year Navy Vet, having spent most of the first decade of the century on active duty. She grew up in the Pacific Northwest, giving her a love of the mountains that she enjoys daily viewing as she now lives in Colorado. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Security and a Master of Business Administration that she earned after the Navy. She has the weaknesses of Vampires, having porphyria. Vampiric myths about their sun weakness were based upon this illness. She is also a Transgender author.
Welcome Kaitlyn Kalor to Creekside Café. I am so excited to be hosting my first author from Tea with Coffee Media https://twitter.com/TeaWCoffeeMedia. Thank you for stopping by my virtual café.
Kaitlyn: Thank you for letting me come by.
Sherri: You spent nine years in the Navy? I have a son who has been in for almost two years. He has just finished his rescue swimmer certification. What was your job in the Navy? Do you use it now that you are a civilian again? Does your time in the Navy influence any of your writing?
Kaitlyn: I was a computer repair for the first 6 years of my time in the Navy. My last 3 was spent as one of their white hat hackers. As a repair person, I managed to half fill a passport in 2 years traveling all over the world to include catching a flight to a carrier from Japan and flying out from Hong Kong. When I left the military, I worked for a Software company that developed software for the Government but after I left that job, the only aspect I still use is the technical writing I did for the Government.
I have a point in the book where one of the characters visit a native city whose design was directly influenced by the time I spent 3 months in Naples and the cities I visited while doing a network install there.
Sherri: You grew up in the Pacific Northwest, I have not been that far west. I’ve only been as far as Wyoming and New Mexico. My niece is out in Washington, and I hope to visit her and her wife one day. My sister-in-law has been out there a couple of times. Do you set any of your stories in Pacific Northwest? Where are your stories set?
Kaitlyn: I currently have no plans to use the Pac NW in the series due to the cultures I am involving. While I have several books planned for the Americas, the time frame puts most of the north under 2 km of ice. The books start 400,000 years in the past, but with Earth looking a little different. The image below is what Earth looks like at the start.
Book one starts between Africa and Asia, in a location that eventually becomes the Middle East. I have a plan that is very very loosely based upon a few scientific theories that will bring the planet inline with how we know the planet to look like.
Sherri: You hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Security and a Master’s in Business Administration. No offense but they hardly seem like creative pursuits. How did you go from computer security and business to being an author?
Kaitlyn: At the time I picked up my degrees, I was heavily involved with both in my company. I started writing when I was 17, in the days of Dial up internet with a Star Trek Play By e-Mail Roleplay group. I started a book with a friend in 2003, but that was never finished due to life for both of us.
In 2015, my company let me go. My health at the time started to slide so I started to stream on Twitch until my pain was too much to focus. I will say this, writing good research papers did help my technical performance in writing.
Sherri: What does Pride Month mean for you?
Kaitlyn: I have no option for it. It’s taken decades for me to accept who I am and to figure it out that I am transgendered. This apathy is a side effect from growing up in a Super-Christian household who preached separation, so I disassociated a lot of things, from birthdays to all holidays as I just didn’t grow up with them.
Sherri: Do you know where your inspiration came from for your novel Dawn of Humanity or the series Generations of Humanity? Did you first get started with a character or scene?
Kaitlyn: The story idea came to me one day in early 2018 when I fell into that part of YouTube. The video suggested that Atlantis might have been in Western Africa, the Eye of the Sahara, or its other name, Richart Structure. By the time I had finished watching, I had a basic outline in my head, covering at least 25 books. It has undergone several revisions since then, but the primary story arc has remained the same.
Sherri: Are you a plotter or a pantser? How do you write? Is this your first novel? How long have you been writing?
Kaitlyn: This is my first completed novel that was started in 2018, but I’ve been writing since 1997, mostly Fanfiction. I am a planster right now. Draft 1 was written by the seat of my pants, then I started using the snowflake method to plan out the rest of the series. Draft 1 was a dual timeline novel, with a group from today discovering the past and re-living memories of the Aliens. I ended up scrapping most of my first draft because the second half of the series didn’t work due to power creep, and I couldn’t find an interesting way to keep the current timeline involved with the past. When I went to do draft 2, I ripped out the modern timeline and everything slid into place.
Sherri: How many books will be in this series? What is the overall theme? What do you hope readers will think or feel when they finish your book?
Kaitlyn: The series is currently planned for 22 books plus an apocalyptic trilogy to wrap up everything at the end.
I am hopeful that my books have my readers looking into our history, learning about civilizations that helped create our current world. I have a plan to write worldwide cultures to include African and American Gods. Morimi is the Yoruba Goddess of Fire for example, and she will have a strong role in the series.
Sherri: Tell me about some of your characters. How would you describe them? What is their theme song?
Kaitlyn: The series uses the concepts of the Yuga’s from Hinduism and Reincarnation. While my ages are shorter than the ones in Hinduism, the concept of the Earth going through Cycles is a key plot point. Right now, I plan on having 6 major ages.
With this in mind, we learn that Enki is a new soul, learning about the world for the first time, while his biological father, Enlil, has been reincarnated several times. Chronos as well. The Anunnaki and Annunaki Titans are Reptilian aliens. Think of the smaller creatures from 1993’s Jurassic Park (Their fake Raptors for example Dilophosaurus) but upright like Humans. They come in all kinds of shapes and sizes.
This is Papsukkal, Gaia’s bodyguard. He is dedicated to protecting her, as he protected her father and grandfather. He very much is like “Another One Bites the Dust” when defending his charges from attack.
Gaia, Khione, and Morimi are Humanaki, they can shift their body sizes from 3 meters plus to human size. They have powers of Earth, Water (Ice), and Fire respectively.
Enki’s Theme song is Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin
F**kin’ Perfect by Pink is Gaia’s theme
Legendary is Chrono’s theme song.
Bad Blood by Taylor Swift is the theme when the two Sky Lords get ready to face off at the end.
Sherri: Kaitlyn, this has been fun. Give us 10 quick, fun facts about you.
Kaitlyn: I am one of the first Navy CTN ratting that was created in 2005. I am a Twitch streamer (when my health allows it), and a Twitch Moderator for a Twitch Partner.
I remember WebTV as my father was one of the few adopters of it. I was the kid who played Oregon Trail in computer labs on the old Apple IIe computers before I was homeschooled. I’ve used NetZero and Juno for dial up internet. My first home computer was a Commodore 64 where I’d end up playing games like F-14 Tomcat. I’d swipe the AOL floppy disc’s from the store entrance whenever I needed floppies.
Being homeschooled, I read a LOT of books. I’d ride my bike 10 miles to the local bookstore and spend the day reading, on most days back when Pagers were all the rage. I’d finish a paperback most days. That’s when I started my writing, via e-mail role play, but I never thought I would be good enough to become an actual author but here we are with my first book coming out 25 years later.
I love Tabletop RPGs, but I tend to be given the role of Game Master. I currently run a game based upon the book with a few from Tea With Coffee Media, for purely selfish reasons. They are helping me flush out the rest of the world.
As I live in Colorado, I grow my own cannabis in hydroponics for my pain management, but I’ve started branching out to grow things like Potatoes and other food in my grow tents.
Sherri: Congratulations on your debut novel. Good luck with your series. I look forward to hearing from you again.
If you all enjoyed this interview, check out Kaitlyn’s book “The Dawn of Humanity” available for pre-order, the links are below, follow her on social media and don’t forget to leave a review. Thanks again for stopping by.
Releases June 21st, 2022!
Book Blurb:
Thousands of years after their planet’s ruin, the Anunnaki and Titans led by Sky Lord An find their way to planet Earth. When this reptilian species lands on Earth, they discover a connection to their powers only described from the days of Olympus.
Sa-Tan Enki led a team of Anunnaki on a mission and set out to create a race of beings that mixed humanity with immortality. However, some of the Titans led by Chronos are unhappy with the creations. What happens when Chronos seeks revenge upon his brother Enlil? To cleanse the new planet of the bastard race, the Titans revolt against the newfound Olympians. Find out what happens in the first book of Generations of Humanity: Dawn of Humanity
If you are an author looking for a virtual coffee shop to hang out, stop by Creekside Cafe. We’ll treat you so many ways you’re bound to like one of them.
sherrilhollister.com/Suspense She Writes Bookstore Dismiss
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