Kinsey asked Katie McGarry:

Why do you write the abbreviation for the University of Kentucky as U of K instead of UK? I am a student there and grew up in a neighboring county and have only ever heard it referred to as UK and the University of Louisville as U of L. I LOVE that the books are set in Kentucky and that you include real universities, but this more uncommon abbreviation takes away some of the authenticity for me when I read it.

Katie McGarry Hi Kinsey,

*Waving* to a fellow Kentucky girl!

I've heard it referred to as both, but I agree, it's most commonly used as UK. I've honestly written it as UK before, but it's been changed during copy editing and I think that's because of my reference to the University of Louisville as U of L. Readers not from Kentucky might be confused as to what UK is (especially since, for a good portion of the world UK refers to the United Kingdom), and putting the "of" in the middle of UK (U of K) would help them with the reference.

To me, it's usually not worth fighting over when there is some other bigger picture issue I dig my feet in about during edits, but I can understand how it pulls you away over authenticity reasons. Next time, I'll stand my ground. :-)

Here's a fun story. In Pushing the Limits, I originally had the dance scene between Echo and Noah happen at basketball homecoming. My editor told me it needed to be changed because there was no such thing as basketball homecoming. My reaction: 0_0

I told her this was Kentucky and we had basketball homecoming. She polled the office and none of them had heard of basketball homecoming. Because she didn't want my readers who weren't from Kentucky to be confused, we changed it to a Valentine's Day dance.

Thank you for reading my books,

Katie

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