Heather Kirchhoff's Blog: Writer, Reader, Reviewer - Posts Tagged "anthology"

This is an article from my town's newspaper. I couldn't access it on the web so I'm typing it up word for word here.

By Terrence Arnold
Advance staff writer

Heather Kirchhoff, like many young people, enjoys reading, especially about paranormal topics. Vampires, aliens and other genres spark the imagination of the seventeen-year-old Lafayette County C-1 High School junior. What separates Kirchhoff from her peers is that she is taking her love of reading and transforming it into a love of writing.
Kirchhoff's work was selected to appear in an anthology of paranormal fiction entitled Apocalypse and edited by Cynthia Shepp. Her short story Save Me is about a young girl who hides out and tries to stay alive during an alien invasion that devastates the world around her. Published in November of 2012, the book is available as a download or in print form.
"The story took just two days to write," said Kirchhoff, "it just came to me." Kirchhoff said the editor of the collection was surprised at her age. She added that the other stories in the collection are very good, including the stories Lotion and Shelf Life.
Kirchhoff's story was selected for the anthology from among a number of entries. The collections editor Shepp put down ground rules for submissions-the story had to be told from the point of view of a survivor-protagonist of an apocalyptic event. The survivor has only a few items that they can carry in a backpack and their wits to help them survive. They were to show how their character would survive in this hostile environment.
Writes Shepp of Kirchhoff's story, "Save Me by Heather Kirchhoff was written by a high school student. Her story was vivdly described, emotionally heart-wrenching, yet a feeling of hope was still kept throughout. Hers is a story of family betrayal, surviving under extraordinary circumstances and new love. It was a wonderful story!"
Kirchhoff has just published her first full-length novel, The Last Night, which tells of a young protagonist Sarah. "After Sarah's boyfriend dies, everything changes for her," said Kirchhoff. The book si 221 pages and is avaiable through Amazon as a download.
Kirchhoff said this novel took her about six months from start to finish. "I kind of knew how it was going to end, but nothing else," she said of having an outline as she wrote.
Kirchhoff said she has learned about herself and has gained confidence in writing and expressing herself through this work. "It's fun," she added. The writing process, she observed, "takes me someplace else for a while." It is often random events in life, maybe a song on the radio, that inspires and influences her.
The process for self-publishing is there for authors who put in the work to create a novel or work of non-fiction. Amazon has a process for getting a new author's work uploaded, formatted, and ready for download by customers. Kirchhoff will get a percentage of every copy sold.
Along with reading and writing, Kirchhoff said she enjoys music, including rock and country, as well as getting outdoors hunting and fishing.
Her next work is already begun, Kirchhoff said. It will involve a theme on magic and she hopes to have it completed by the end of September of this year. Quite an ambitious deadline, but this young author seems keen on meeting it.
Kirchhoff's father Todd said he is extremely proud of his daughter and "what she's accomplished in such a short time."
Her mother, DeAnn Dillon says she and her husband Chris are very proud of Heather. "She always has a book. If she's not writing, she's reading," she said. Dillon credited her daughter's middle school teacher for getting her interested in books and said her daughter is determined to be a writer and is following her dream.