K. R. Hill's Blog, page 4

The treasure in Mom's home repair.

Mom's sprinklers stopped working. The California sun quickly turned the green lawn into parched dirt.

Now my eighty-three-year-old mother has to fight with the hose and risk a fall, just to water her dirt.

I soon got a call about fixing the sprinklers.

The thought of repairing the sprinklers, and specifically, of returning to the house where I grew up, depressed me. That house was full of ghosts, memories of a wild, smothering childhood. Sometimes I got ill when I visited.

But, to the sun-baked, stucco tract house, I went.

The first day I spent tearing out the old control box for the sprinklers. It was wired into the same 1956
electrical receptacle as the refrigerator, the coffee maker, the radio, the toaster and the blender.

While I stood in the flower bed and twisted wires together, memories of my sisters and I ran about, shouting and waiting for the ice cream man, rushing to swim in a neighbor's pool. And a memory of me sat across the way, parked on the dark street with my first date. 'Working on the night moves....'

Night moves? Well, that's what I like to believe. But actually, I was too nervous to move.

When I finished the control box, I reached into the hole where the sprinkler shut off valve is located. When I turned the valve I felt it break. It would not turn off.

An easy replacement of an anti siphon valve, just turned into 'Mega job.'

I would not be able to quickly escape the memories and mistakes that house represented. I thought about a neighbor boy and I hiding in the garage, terrorizing the house across the street by shooting bb's at their screen door. We were great snipers!

How we laughed, hiding and covering our mouths, each time the bb struck and the woman rushed to the door to see who was bothering her.

I went inside and found my mom sitting at the kitchen table, leaning over a book, a clothes pin holding the pages open. A stack of books stood on the table beside her.

The options were few, and I explained each. She decided to replace thee broken valve with a quality brass valve.

Yep, "we'd replace the valve." That meant me digging up the dirt with a pick axe, and her reading, all cozy with warm tea and toast spread with jam.

I did moan and gripe a bit. But as I have aged I've managed to put things into perspective. I thought about my mom, and how she devoted her life to her family, and worked in a male-dominated field every day, then came home and studied, earning eventually, a masters degree and far better pay for her family. She took my sisters and I from the projects to a safe, clean home, with a yard.

That was why I was repairing her sprinklers.

For years I fought against the house and the memories. I imagined them being terrible. And for years I traveled the world. In new places there is only possibility. I was not shoved into the box of what people remember about me.

As I sat in the dirt, my hands muddy, spreading pvc glue on white pipe, I realized that at some point over the years I shifted the way I thought about the house.

I even laughed as I wiped my hands on a rag, because I wondered if that was what it meant to truly grow up. My beliefs about this house were formed when I was a child. My adult, however, reevaluated and allowed me laugh about the whole thing. Mostly.

After about ten trips to the hardware store, I finished the sprinklers and shoveled dirt back into the holes, removed the top from each pop up sprinkler head and cleaned it.

Mom stood in the sun, her bare feet on the walkway, and shaded her eyes as I demonstrated the watering system, spraying water over her dead lawn, which would soon be growing back to its former glory.

She clapped and laughed.

Inside the house she presented me with a bag of books to return to the library. Together we drove there, and I held her hand as we walked up the walkway. I was free.

A Time for LOVE

I was depressed. My books weren't selling. After years of work, I felt as though I was shouting into the dark, empty void of Kindle cyberspace.

On top of that, I injured my Achilles and was off work.

I couldn't write, couldn't walk, and hated the world like Donald Trump.

And then my lovely fiance taught me the meaning of Love. She whisked me away--hurt foot and all, to Bend, Oregon.

OMGosh, what a joy to stand on a hill and look out over green countryside, the breeze pushing gold and yellow leaves across my feet. I had forgotten how blue the sky could be!

The city sludge, the fear, dropped away.

There was so much clear beauty around me that I was reminded why I write: to share truth and joy and love. It was okay to have slow sales. After all, readers were writing and saying they loved my work.

How lucky I am!




A woman I love had cared so deeply that she gave this gift vacation, this spa of  a town. As I held her and thanked her, I thought how strange love is, the strongest of all forces, yet so gentle. It is both the living strength a mother has for the infant in her arms, as well as the power to lift a car off that child, should it be in danger.

It is not the Action Hero kind of power. It is the soft gurgle of a baby that makes us mighty. I became a better man that day in Bend.

Weed! Legalization and human migration...

I'm visiting Oregon, which recently joined the ranks of the states to have legalized the possession of marijuana.

While enjoying dinner with family, the topic drifted to the huge influx of people moving to Portland. Of course, the migration was attributed to the popular cable show, Portlandia.

We spoke about the booming population for some time, and soon the topic shifted. But the next morning I wondered if the recent legalization of pot had attracted the masses.

It would be very interesting to see if Denver, Seattle, and Detroit, the largest cities in other states who have legalized marijuana, have also seen growth since the legislation passed.

What do you think? Let me know.

Allowing Love

Mom is now eighty-three years old. I used to visit to do maintenance on her house. But as time passed I came to understand that the maintenance was an excuse to be with her.

Now when I pop over I hold her hand. It is how I feel close. I want to believe there will not be an era of my life without her.

By holding her hand we share the moment, and I don't think about watering the trees, fixing the toilet, or mopping the floor. Instead, I simply share the moment with her, share a moment of love when the world does not intrude.

During the years of misunderstandings and arguments, of laughter and shouts, I realized that she was going through a time that Native Americans honor, a time of releasing the world.

Now I try to honor that. I can't ask her to stay, or to think about me and my needs. No, I can only allow her to live her personal journey. That is why I hold her hand. That is when there is only love. I will always hold her hand.

The Playboy Saint!

That quote you read at the top of my blog, about truth, impressed me greatly. So much so I had to look up St. Augustine, or Augustine of Hippo, as he was also known.

My my, it seems old Augustine was quite the playboy, and known for saying: "Save me, Lord, but not just yet."

When I read that I had to laugh as I imagined the dashing young man in compromising situations with women.

That's what I like: real people, with real stories about them. They lived fully.

My Yucatan Timeout

Is it possible to be in love with a place?

Years ago I took a timeout from life in the US, from the nine-to-five grind, and threw it all to the wind.

Yes, I did something that forever established me as the wild one in my family.

I pulled my nose off the grindstone ('Oh my God! How could he?'), and took a timeout to heal from a divorce, to rebuild my life with inner, spiritual work, and do what I needed, what I knew to be the truth for me.

I found a simple Mayan village on the Caribbean, found an abandoned house to live in, carried water in a jug, slept in a hammock, the surf whispering in my dreams.

Imagine letting go of the city stress and instead walking quiet village streets, calling to friends who roll past on creaking bicycles, sandals flopping the hot, sandy asphalt.

The inner work I did there in my shell of a house, geckos darting about the walls, fleeing a cat who often came to visit, a frog residing in the toilet tank, set the tone for years to come. I remembered who I was. I scrapped off the crust, so to speak, of who I thought other people wanted me to be, and found that happy person inside--that jumping, laughing child I lost along the way.

As I work to master the craft required to be a novelist, my village keeps popping up. It became the setting for my latest book, The Mayan Case. And it brought me great pleasure to share with my readers the joy that village brought to me.

I prefer not to think of myself as 'the wild one' in my family, but instead as the authentic one. Is that not what we all should be, what is in our heart to become, what we love, instead of what Mom or Dad wants us to be?

So, I call on all of you to be your own Wild One and shake off the wants or perceived wants of others, and you in your heart and decide what would really make you happy and keep you in joy? And that is what you need to be doing. That is Truth.
Somewhere, your village is calling ....

Ebook Cover Evolution ...

I wanted to inject a light-hearted tone to this post, hence the photo of the fiance and I clowning on the Danish island of Bornholm.

I feel the designer and I have nearly reached the end of the rocky road of creating a good cover. At this point there are two images that I can't release. So, I'm having the designer work on both. She loves me. I have worked with her on several projects, and highly recommend her. You can find her on fiverr.com, and she goes by the name 'landofawes.'

 Here is the first finalist (left). The changes I want are to have the Mayan glyph fill the block. I'm also having the blood splatter removed, and the font of the title widened, and it should have the appearance of hammered metal. But again, I have the problem: in thumbnail size, does it convey a feeling, a message?  Is the knife image needed?

The favorite (right) is this image. The knife speaks with a loud voice. I've asked to have the glyphs take on a 3d look, and to have the font, widened, with hammered metal appearance, on this image too.  We have come a long way!  What do readers think? Let me know. Please give opinions, tips, feedback.

To write Shit or Art?

 'The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.' St. Augustine--


Kobenhavn breakfastSomething has just pissed me off lately. And yes, I'm writing this straight from the heart. If I make mistakes, live with it or 'piss off!' 

I've been struggling with formula writing, the popular novel. I grew up with Faulkner, Joyce, Le Quin, Blixen (Dinesen), Durrell. I don't want to write that cardboard crap I see out there. FB is full of the 'writers' cranking out 10,000 words a day! A fricking day!  Is there one word of beauty, truth, or love in all their books? I doubt it. But holy crap, they know the formula.

I think every writer has to decide what they write, on which side of the line they stand. Do you write 'grab 'em the collar and slam 'em to the desk commercial clone books, or do you strive to show beauty, reveal a truth? Do you work to be a modern Melville, who wrote possibly the greatest American novel ever written, yet had to go back to work in the custom house because it did so poorly in sales? But it will forever be dissected and taught in English classes. Or do you want to be Grisham, who, due to the success of his formula novels, was able to pay for the restoration of the Faulkner library? One got the Nobel prize. The other the $ales. 

Writers, however, want to be read. I want to be read. But maybe that is why my books sell poorly. I am unable to concentrate on formula. Durrell calls, saying, leave the formula, write art. And maybe that is why some reviewers want to beat me with a hammer: I depart from the tried and true a million fricking times formula. Readers want to be lulled into the fictive realm. They don't want to think. Heaven forbid. 

The answer, I believe, is to study the craft. Know the formula and work within it. Give a great read, but strive to create character development as never done before. Paint scenes brilliantly with few words, but shocking clarity. Refine the system. Choose art, but work within the formula. 

Making an Ebook Cover

I recently got tired of readers telling me they nearly didn't purchase my book, Touching Spirits, the Mayan Case, because it sounded like a new age book.

I didn't want anything hindering sales with my action/suspense novel, so I decided to not only change the title, but the cover as well. This led to two weeks of putting my graphic designer through hell, changing my mind, changing fonts, colors, and then chucking the entire idea and beginning anew.

This is where we were when I decided that in thumbnail size the cover was mostly empty space. The gun and badge are merely specks that small. This is not a meaningless consideration. 99.99% of potential buyers on Amazon will first see the cover that size. If you don't have something to make them stop and click to see it larger, they are gone, and so is a sale. So, I went back to the designer.








This is what the designer came up with--making the gun and badge larger. She zoomed in on them. But still it bothered me. I was irritable and the fiance felt it. That night she took me to Barnes & Noble's (known in my family as Barney's Noddles because of a four-year-old's mistake), and we ravished the suspense section of the book store. The help quietly moved away as we took stacks of books from their homes and laid them on the floor, so we could stand back and gawk. It worked. I came up with an idea.

And here we are ....  It is not the final, but I feel much better about it than the other layout or design. We are going to enlarge the knife, add some dripping blood, so that it becomes the focal point, and most likely add a background color. In general, we'll just play with it for a while until it pops. When the knife and the blood are larger, they will be clearly visible in thumbnail size.
I thought I'd throw this one in for a laugh. My designer threw everything in the refrigerator together to make this tasty casserole of a cover. 'The Frog Ruin.'

Young, Free, and in love with a Spy--A real life Romance!

In 1972, author Kolleen Kidd found herself involved with a Soviet defector, Sergei Nikolayevich Kourdakov, a former KGB agent and naval officer. I met Kolleen on Goodreads.com, and wanted to bring her on the blog for my readers to experience the intrigue she lived.   A Rose for Sergei.  http://amzn.to/29xyirr
1. Kolleen, please take us to that world of excitement. You were young and flirting with a defector, a former enemy. Was it exciting?
Yes, it was very exciting. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love mystery and intrigue. I was sixteen when I found summer clerical employment with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington DC. I couldn’t tell anyone what I did or even the location of the building where I worked. It was one of many secrets I would have to keep.
The Soviet Union was our enemy. I still remember the practice air raid drills—hiding under my desk in elementary school in preparation for the unimaginable. When Sergei and I met, at my Federal Government office, we were both twenty-one. He shook my hand and would not release it. The heated attraction between us was immediate, in spite of the fact that our countries were adversaries. We were young, single, and on our own in a beautiful and powerful city. It was both exciting and frightening…we were watched and followed. Each thought the other was a spy.
2. Why did you write A Rose for Sergei?
I wrote this book to speak up for someone who is no longer here to defend himself. I had never planned to write a book about our story, which was personal and private. I kept our relationship secret for all these years. Not even my best friends knew about Sergei. All that changed after I discovered an independent documentary film that discredited Sergei’s life and his book, The Persecutor. I knew Sergei personally; I knew his background had been investigated by our Federal Government.
3. If you could convey in one sentence what you learned from the relationship, what would that be?
I learned to be open and honest about my feelings, to say the words that need to be said.
4. I found A Rose for Sergei warm and touching. I am happy to see it climbing the sales charts on Amazon. Are there plans for other books in the works?
I do have a Fiction book in the works that’s geared towards the romance genre.
On a side note, it’s great to have a male perspective, and hear that you found my book “warm and touching.” Thank you for your kind words, Kevin. As a writer, you know that book sales on Amazon fluctuate daily. My book has seen both sides of that climb, although I prefer when it’s going up.
5. What advice would you pass along to other Indie authors about their writing, and about the publishing process?
My most important advice would be to not confuse “Indie” with “Unedited.” Every writer needs an editor. My editor asked for more clarification on certain items because of the time period. I laughed when I saw, “What’s a princess telephone?  What are S&H green stamps?” scrawled in red on the margin of my manuscript. Publishing requirements vary, my manuscript needed to be cleared by the Department of Defense prior to professional editing and publishing.
Self-publishing also means self-promoting your book. As an Indie Author, promoting your story is a huge part of the writing journey. I’ve found Goodreads to be a great place to connect with readers and authors. Blogging also allows me to have a personal, direct connection with everyone.

'Each thought the other was a spy.' Let me play with that quote a bit: Would that not be a great starting point for a suspense or spy novel? We know A Rose for Sergei is non-fiction, but I hope it serves as a platform from which you launch a fiction career. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I look forward to reading more from Kolleen Kidd. Readers will enjoy Kolleen's blog: https://aroseforsergei.blogspot.com/

Thank you.