About kim Hornsby:
Kim Hornsby is an Award-Winning Seattle novelist who has shared space on the top five bestseller list with Stephen King, Dean Koontz and J.D. Robb as well as many other bestselling Supernatural Suspense authors. She loves to write about women in strange lands beating the odds, then thread in a believable paranormal aspect to make her readers wonder, “what if”. The DREAM JUMPER’S PROMISE has over 70,000 sales on Amazon alone and reached the #1 spot in Paranormal Romance as well as winning Top Pick Chanticleer Book Reviews’ Paranormal Mystery/Thriller. Necessary Detour was #1 in Romantic Suspense and is now in the prestigious Amazon Encore program. She writes for Amazon’s Kindle Worlds in the police procedural Series Lei Crime.
Kim writes daily, blogs weekly, and is published by Top Ten Press, Cajun Flair Publishing, The Wild Rose Press, Amazon Encore, and Kindle Worlds. Suspense, Romance, and the Supernatural are themes threaded throughout her fictional work and surprise endings are her specialty.
A mother, a wife, a messy housekeeper, a dog lover, and a voracious reader, Kim was born in Belleville, Canada, then lived in Vancouver, Maui, Whistler, Taipei, and now makes Seattle her home. Instead of spending her money on clothes and jewelry, she likes to travel. Plane tickets are always found on her desk and a story line to go with those tickets can be found in her head.
What inspires you to write?
I seem to have a need to verbally spew. I used to be a talkative person but now I write books and save my husband having to listen to all my thoughts. I’m a voracious reader and look forward to getting back to my current book every night, so giving other people that pleasure has become something I’ve become hooked on.
I love to hear from a reader that they couldn’t put my book down, or carried the Kindle around the house with them reading, or thought about the story long after they’d finished reading the book. When I get an email that tells me how I got someone through a bad patch with the distraction of my book, that inspires me to keep writing.
Tell us about your writing process.
I write a very basic first draft that l’d be absolutely ashamed to release. It involves some dialogue, some description but mostly consists of “she went here, she did this, she discovered this…”
Then I go back in to write the book, adding in description and dialogue, as well as crafting the sentences to sound less childishly written. It’s here that I use reduction writing, condensing three sentences into one more powerful sentence.
I wait a month, then I go back in to do the exact same process as above. It is at this point I try to add the ending’s twist, something totally unexpected. Often I wait another month or two and do another rewrite. If I have the time, I do this two or three more times before the book goes to my beta readers, then the editor. The longer my process, the better the writing is, unfortunately.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
I used to earn my living as an actress so getting inside the characters’ heads comes easily to me. I slip into characters quite effortlessly and hope that comes across on the page. It’s an enjoyable process to sit down to think like a certain character in my book and become them for a few hours. Writing first person is the most enjoyable process for me but that isn’t a style often used in the type of book I write.
So no, I don’t talk to my characters. I become them.
What advice would you give other writers?
Keep writing, learning, asking for advice. Be open to improvement. Don’t think your first novel will be the Great American Breakout Novel. Although it might, writing is a craft you can learn over time and it’s probable that your best work is yet to come. Join a writing critique group and make sure those people are good writers or critics themselves.
Read. Analyze books similar to your style and soak their methods in.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
I submitted my first written novel to over 60 agents with no final interest although several read the full manuscript and thought it had promise. As suggested by writers, I moved on to write a second novel that I considered my practice book, packed it away under the bed, wrote a third and ended up publishing both. The practice novel, Necessary Detour, was published by The Wild Rose Press and actually became a bestseller on Amazon. It is now published partly by Amazon Encore because of this. For my third book, the Dream Jumper’s Promise, I self-published, a move I’m very thankful for. That novel has had 70,000 downloads, is an award-winner and has been a top five bestseller many times. I came into self-publishing near the beginning and was very fortunate to take advantage of many programs at the beginning that don’t work as well now because of the great volume of books available now, like KDP Select free days. The opportunity to self-publish was a game changer for me and I’m very grateful.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
I’m scared, to tell you the truth. The market is so full, it’s hard to get footing. I love that anyone can publish pretty much anything but I worry that it’s hard to get your books seen. The people with money for marketing, who also have a good product, do well. In this day, you either need money to hire a marketing person, need time and knowledge to do your own marketing or need the backing of a big publishing house to recommend your work.
The current bestselling author is usually a marketing expert as well as a writer and that takes up an enormous amount of time. Writers willing to learn that craft are pulling ahead of the pack. My career plan includes having an agent and making enough money that I can hire a marketing company to handle my advertising and social media campaigns.
What do you use?: Professional Editor, Professional Cover Designer, Beta Readers
What genres do you write?: Suspense, Romantic Suspense, Paranormal Romance, Mystery, Contemporary Romance, Supernatural, Paranormal, Women’s Commercial Fiction, Police Procedurals, Thrillers
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print, Audiobook
Website(s)
Kim Hornsby Home Page Link
Link To Kim Hornsby Page On Amazon
Your Social Media Links
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All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit, to allow you, the reader, to hear the author in their own voice.
Thanks for having me!