The image you see above is the front cover of my first edition of my first Kennedy Ryan novel.

I’m sure all authors can attest to this: getting started on my author journey was a rocky road!

I was 21 years old and in my second year of college. At the time, I didn’t yet declare my double major in Music and English. I was more focused on Gen-Eds and trying to figure out the best path for my life. I hadn’t taken any writing classes at all. I was writing the first draft of my Kennedy Ryan novel. Without any writing experience or know-how. I knew nothing about the three-act structure, character development, etc. But there I was, publishing my story with WestBow Press in 2016.

Fast-forward a few years later. Very few sales. Typos in the book. No marketing skills whatsoever. Wondering if I should republish the book.

In the spring of 2021, I met with a friend who was also an author, and she recommended Author Media and the Christian Writers Institute to me. She encouraged me to pull the book from WestBow and republish it. So I did. I bought back my rights to the book and rewrote the entire story. I took my online courses through Author Media and the Christian Writers Institute. In January of 2023, I self-published my second edition of Kennedy Ryan: A Story of Adjustment and Adventure on Amazon KDP.

But the seeds of the garden of my author career were planted years before I even took the compass exam to register for college. For as long as I can remember, I have enjoyed writing stories and poems. Writing has been my passion years before Kennedy Ryan came to be. I’ve wanted to write ever since I was a little girl. My most favorite genre is fantasy, back then and nowadays. I actually hope to build my author brand in the fantasy genre. But that doesn’t mean I won’t try other genres. My Kennedy Ryan series, after all, is not fantasy. It is young adult mystery and Christian fiction. I also really enjoy science fiction, and I’ve got some science fiction series in my head, just waiting to be released into the world in book form!

So my first-ever book to be published would be the first edition of Kennedy Ryan. My first poetry book, and second book overall, is Step Into Creativity. It was such a fun project, writing forty-five poems spanning a theme of creativity. Themes of the poems include God creating the world, writing poems about fiction and poetry, writing about the inspirations from my own household fairy and mermaid decorations, and even writing about the different talents of many of my own family members (with their knowledge, of course). I self-published Step Into Creativity with Amazon KDP in 2022, shortly after I finished college. I dedicated the book to my college poetry teacher, Tami K. Haaland. I graduated from Montana State University of Billings in December 2021 with an English BA and a Music BA.

Anyway, back to Kennedy Ryan.

I first created the character of Kennedy Ryan when I was about 11 or 12 years old. I was inspired to create Kennedy by a PC game called Barbie: Explorer. My two younger sisters and I loved Barbie growing up. The game’s adventure genre, as well as Barbie’s travels through Egypt, made me think of Wild West adventures (due to Egypt and the Wild West both being associated with the desert landscape). My siblings and I, being imaginative kids, made up our own story based on the story of the game; this culminated in the creation of Kennedy Ryan. At that time, my older brother was a hardcore fan of Indiana Jones and he had my sisters and I come up with state names for our characters. I chose “Kennedy Arizona.” This was short-lived; I changed the name to “Kennedy Texas.” Upon actually preparing to write the first draft of my first book at age 21, though, I did away with the state name in order to avoid legal comparisons with Indiana Jones. In writing the stories over the years, I had made countless revisions until I came to the story I am at right now.

The entire Kennedy Ryan series is as follows:

1. Kennedy Ryan: A Story of Adjustment and Adventure
2. Kennedy Ryan: The Chilling Case of the Chupacabra
3. The Adventures of Kennedy Ryan and Friends (a collection of seven novellas)
4. Kennedy Ryan: Swiftly on the Wings of the Wind

I know, it’s a unique set of series, because the third book is not a novel, but made up of seven novellas (which are like short novels, but still too long to be considered short stories). The first, second, and fourth book are novels. Original plans included having four novels instead of just three. The second book, The Chilling Case of the Chupacabra, was originally written as a novella to be included in the novella collection, but after switching around characters and themes, I finally settled on two novels, one novella collection, and a final novel. For the final book, Swiftly on the Wings of the Wind, I didn’t know how I was going to come up with the perfect title for the grand finale of the Kennedy Ryan series, but I knew other authors such as Madeleine L’Engle used phrases from the Psalms for book titles, so I figured I should try that myself. Being that the Kennedy Ryan books are Christian books, why not? Who knew what kind of inspiration might come from one of the Psalms? I found the phrase swiftly on the wings of the wind in Psalm 18. And lo and behold, not only did I run into a catchy title, but that very psalm was a perfect fit for the very plot of that Kennedy Ryan book! How, you ask? Sorry, no spoilers! Better find the book and read it!

The Kennedy Ryan series is officially finished, and I look forward to my future in writing more fiction and poetry!