The sun has not risen ─yet and here I am up─ writing. I am not even a breakfast person let alone a morning person. But again, here I am up─writing. I find myself bursting with words sometimes that just have to come out. When that happens, I’ll write on anything at hand. I’ve been known to write on concert programs, napkins, envelopes and place-mats at restaurants. Hmm, the place-mats are paper so now you have an idea of my most frequent dining spots─diners with my girlfriends and spouse of 4 decades, Larry.
I began writing at age four. That’s right, four. My baby brother, Jimmy had a bad asthma attack and I wrote my name and ‘I love you’ on his alphabet blocks. At five, I began teaching school but that’s another story. At eight, I started my journals. My mother took my first entry to my mother and father’s marriage counseling appointment. I had written about Dad yelling and Mom yelling back. My handwriting was not good so when Mom asked me to translate, I left the part about her out. I was no fool. My childhood was hard. I have kept Journals ever since. Unfortunately most went up in smoke in the Chimneys 2 Fire in The Great Smoky Mountains when my round house with a panoramic view perished. I say perished because that round house was alive with laughter, love and good times. It wrapped itself around you as if it had arms once you climbed the 45 degree angle hill to its wraparound sweeping deck. But I am getting ahead of myself.
I was known for telling stories─no, not lies─stories to my peers and cousins at the family cottage on Long Island Court in Fairhaven, Michigan on Lake St. Clair. I had forgotten I did that. I remembered when my cousin took her children to the Doctor’s office, read Highlights Magazine for Children and found my first piece of children’s fiction within. It was entitled For Sale, One Mom. I won Author of the Month for that and have a silver commemorative plate on my mantle to prove it. It was based on my real children and cooking skills. It involves blaring smoke alarms, enough said. It had a humorous bent. It was later part of Marvin Composes a Tea, an anthology of humorous stories for children.
I wrote Beyond the Beach when I spent my summers in my mountain home going to Gatlinburg’s Anna Marie Porter Library and Pigeon Forge Library using their computers and printer. Then I got a laptop for Christmas and a year later a printer for my June 12th birthday-we won’t mention my age anymore. My debut book is a compilation of people I’ve known and people I totally made up─like Gus and Daisy. My invented characters were personified in that wonderful couple who do exist in reality. Thirty four years later, I found them on TV in a Swifter Commercial saying “I’ve been living in a fool’s paradise.” Some parts of Caren are me, many aren’t. Caren was more educated than I was when I first wrote the book. Caren’s divorce trauma was mine. I won’t say if her sex life is mine and I’m not saying Larry is Chance. A lot of Chance may be Larry but Chance’s jealousy is certainly not Larry! As I tell my daughter(s), “It’s FICTION!!!!! Read the damn book.”
I wrote the book in 1984! My mother typed it on an old Remington typewriter! My Dad read it and said my sex scenes were…strong. During those thirty-something years ,it sat in a folder in my file cabinet since I was busy being a preschool, grade school, high school and community college teacher. I was a preschool teacher about five minutes when I wrote my first article for teachers, Preschool Cookery. After that I got a bunch of degrees, raised two children, divorced, taught for 25 years and wrote two dozen articles for teachers and parents. Then I wrote my dissertation in 2001.So, I didn’t have time to write romances. Did I tell you I took that Ph.D. of mine to Saginaw Valley State University to become a Professor of Teacher Education, Graduate Studies? Caren in my book is working on her doctorate when the book begins. She’s an English prof. While I was an English major, I never taught English. I did become the Education Coordinator for the Child Development Center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus. U of M as we call it─ Go Blue! ─ is where Chance and Caren have their chance encounter. Sorry puns just happen when I write. Many times my sense of humor cracks me up when I write much to the consternation of my first editor, my soulmate friend, Linda Wilson who was pretty darn funny herself. She read all 43 versions of this book and the two that follow. She edited correcting spelling, punctuation, errors, plot, and character development saying “Caren would not do that.” “I beg to differ, she just did.” Sadly, Linda died in 2015. I have a picture of her in every room and I write with her picture at my side. To say I miss her terribly is a lie. I miss her like I cannot even begin to express and I ‘hear’ her when I write. “I want you to be a serious writer, stop fooling around,” she’d say. She is the Nikki in the story and has her own romance in Back to the Beach. She would be over the moon now since this book is in print!
I retired in 2013 in April. I vowed to write my novels in retirement. On May 31st, I gathered my manuscript and carted it off to Office Max where they scanned my mother’s typewritten copy of my book into the computer. Carolynn Gilbreath, my office mate and BFF toiled and worked her technology magic so that I could edit and update the document. She now is my new Editor and reads everything I write. She spots plot errors and laughs in all the right places. I don’t think she blushes as she reads although I don’t know that for a fact.
After my Smoky Mountain round house went up in all sorts of smoke November 2016, I wondered where I’d write. I wrote mainly in the summer at the dining room table overlooking the Tennessee hills but I have found I can write in my Michigan home as well. One December, I wrote Mountain Hot . It is set─ guess where─in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
Beyond the Beach, a series of five books, is set in Hawaii. The Pink Palace is The Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki Beach. Be sure to stay there. Larry and I have made 18-19 trips there so the scenes are authentic. I’ll never admit to being in a hula dance contest so don’t ask.
Since I wrote this, I have written the series Back to the Beach and Promises on the Beach. .Be on the lookout for them. I started my Smoky Mountain Series with Beyond the Mountain. It introduces you to the Weather Girls, Skye, Storme, and Sunny, Scotts-Irish black haired mop top heroines that burn up the Smokies. Yes, I know that makes Sunny, Sunny Weather and Storm, Storme Weather but hey, life is a hoot when it isn’t a beach.
When I write, time flies. I’ve been writing since 7:00 a.m. The sun is now up. It’s 9:15 I didn’t even notice. And that’s how it is with me. I write and I am transported to places like Hawaii, The Smoky Mountains, Cape Cod. I’m going back to bed as soon as I send this to my webmaster, for his magic and approval.
Kathy Kalmar was born in Detroit Michigan where she currently lives with her husband, Larry. She’s the mother of two adult children and Grammie to three. Love and family inspire her writing. She got her second chance to love when she married Larry in 1981. She writes non-fiction for teachers and parents and fiction for children. Though she reads widely, she prefers reading contemporary romances and enjoys writing them. She finds inspiration for her writing in her Smoky Mountain cabin in Tennessee, which she rebuilt after the 2016 Chimney Top Two Wildfire. Although she enjoys reading, walking, and writing, she excels in hot tubing, chocolate, and in sampling generous glasses of wine, preferably on Waikiki Beach or The Smoky Mountains. She loves to wander in Cape Code as well. Kathy enjoys mai tais and butterscotch moonshine no matter where she is. Aloha and Mahalo, enjoy your read and y’all come back now, hear?
My puppy is all grown up now 🙂