Hello everyone! I hope all is well with you! I’ve got a new Clean Reads author for you. Her name is L.L. Kuhl and she’s got a very intriguing story for you. Get to know her a little bit and check out her book “Chasm!”
Interview Questions
- Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process?
My writing process begins mid-morning to early afternoon, usually after I have done a little social media promoting of both of my books, Everlasting and Chasm. I am fortunate enough to work with my husband in our car dealership, so on the slow days, I can get a lot of writing done in my little office there. After I get all of my social media promoting and my book keeping done for the dealership, it is usually around 1 in the afternoon when I begin. Then I work off and on all afternoon until 5:30 when we close. If I can sneak a little in after work I try to, but most days the evenings are busy getting supper made and household chores done.
- What inspires you to keep writing?
Getting my story told inspires me to keep writing. It feels, at times, that the characters are urging me to tell their story, so this propels me into getting it done. There are days though, when I do a lot of procrastinating.
- What advice would you give an aspiring author?
My Advice to aspiring authors would be to never give up! Most likely, you will hear a ton of “nos” and get a pile of rejections. Don’t let that stop you. Keep on trying and you will get there. I am living proof that as hard as it may seem to get published, it can happen!!
- Who inspired you to keep writing?
My husband and Mom both inspired me to keep writing. They gave me the confidence and courage to keep going even when I thought my writing was horrible. I was glad they did. They didn’t let me give up!!
- What genres do you read?
I love to read romance, Young Adult, Adult and thrillers, so it’s pretty much a wide range of genres for me. I love them all.
- If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?
If I could change the world it would be to bring peace back into our world again. There is so much fighting and so many scary things out there, you don’t know what is going to happen next. If we could restore a little peace, I think the world would be a happier place.
Photo credit: BottleLeaf via Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-ND
- If you could sit down to dinner with one author, who would it be? And why? What would you ask him or her?
Gosh this is a hard one. There are so many I would love to talk to. I think it would have to be Nicholas Sparks, though. I love his novels and my favorite one is The Notebook. I would love to ask him if he ever felt like giving up? The publishing world can be brutal, and once you get a book published the real work begins, sometimes this leaves you wondering whether it is all worth it, so I would love to see Nicholas Sparks’ reaction to this question.
- What is your ideal vacation spot?
Disney World is my ideal vacation spot. My family and I go there quite a bit, but we all love going. We spend some great quality family time together there and get amped and ready whenever it is time to go back again.
Photo credit: danuv via Visual Hunt / CC BY
- Do you have any writing quirks that help you write?
Not really, although I do like to have a glass of wine when I write now and again. This helps me to relax and brings the creativity out.
- What is your favorite time of day to write? My favorite time of day would probably be in the late afternoon to evening, (if I’m not too tired from the long day).
Now about Lynn’s book!
Title: Chasm
Genre: Adult Suspense
Published by Clean Reads Publishing
Tag Line: What happens when you’re in love with your children’s abductor?
Blurb:
Taylor Vine thinks she can fight off the demons of her past when she moves back home to Estill Springs, Tennessee, but it doesn’t take long to see that things aren’t quite that easy. The bumps she hears in the night soon escalate, keeping her up at nights, and it isn’t long before her most precious possessions, her children, get abducted. She finds herself in a race against time to try to find them before it’s too late. One wrong move and the outcome could be disastrous.
Excerpt:
Her heart picked up its pace, and she reached for the phone. She hesitated, unsure whether to even answer it. But she plucked it from its receiver. “Hello?” Her voice slid out rickety and unsure.
The male voice on the other end was dark and deeply plagued with distress. It broke, and she struggled to make out what he was saying.
What she heard next was unimaginable; it didn’t sound human. The grief penetrated through the voice—through the phone—flanking it with wretched wails and sobs. “I’ve killed the children. Heaven…help me…I’ve killed the children.” The phone went silent.
Taylor’s knees buckled. “What?” The hyper pitch in her voice strained out. “Goodness gracious, who is this? What happened? Whose children?” Her knees about took her down again. She caught the edge of the counter, catching herself before she fell. “Answer me, for crying out loud! Don’t hang up on me!”
She listened desperately, plastering the phone to her ear. But the phone was silent. “Hello, hello? Answer me!” Frantically clicking the telephone cradle button, she tried to bring him back, but there was only a dial tone.
She pounded the phone on the counter so forcefully that the plastic mouthpiece broke into a million tiny pieces. She let it fall, left it dangling by its cord. Swiftly making her way to the hall closet, she rummaged through the plastic totes for a flashlight. “There has to be one in here somewhere,” she mumbled to herself. Extension cords and old Christmas lights spilled over onto the floor.
Finally finding a flashlight, she clicked it on. It was dim, but it would do. She ran back to the hall, to the children’s rooms, feeling no pain in her swollen ankle.
Flinging Cody’s door wide, she flashed the light toward the wall where his bed sat. In slow motion, the lonely, empty, disheveled bed yanked a horrifying scream from her gut, reverberating through the house. The earth quit spinning, and she was lost to oblivion. “NO! Not my children! Please, God…not my children.” She needed life support, couldn’t breathe; the air was being sucked from her body in rapid swells. She dropped to the floor, her world going black—closing in—smothering.
Not knowing how long she’d been out, Taylor struggled to her feet, she was sure it wasn’t long; it was still black outside, flashes of lightning still cracking in through the window. She raced to check on Nora. Her room was the same: deserted, hollow, puncturing a bleeding, oozing hole in Taylor’s chest the size of a large, bottomless chasm.
“For crying out loud, no…please, no.” The tears coursed down her face. She staggered numbly to Nora’s empty bed, collapsing on it, her hand reaching, groping—trying to find the warmth of her baby girl. But the only thing the tangled blankets and sheets offered her was a bleak and disgusting coldness. It shocked her through her hand. How long had they been gone? Time couldn’t wait, she needed to find them.
Buy Links:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01F6PXFY6
Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/chasm-lk-kuhl/1123761841?ean=2940158502675
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/chasm/id1111084473?mt=11
Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/chasm-14
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/635334
Author Bio:
L.K. Kuhl lives in Nebraska with her husband of twenty-nine years, young son, Nathan, and Greg, their Black Lab dog. She has two older daughters, Morgan and Brittani and son-in-law, Trevor. L.K. has been writing for over twenty years. She first began writing children’s books and poetry, moved on to writing music, and is now writing Young Adult and Adult novels. Her first book, Everlasting, a Young Adult Paranormal Romance, was published in February, 2016. She loves spending time with her family, vacationing, writing, reading, and taking long walks. It’s the characters who write their own stories in her novels, and she is just their messenger, sharing it with the world.
I got the idea to write Chasm because my husband used to be an engineer for the railroad. Although my husband never worked with this gentleman directly, one of the engineers on the railroad hit and killed his wife and children with the train he was driving. It was no fault of the engineer. The wife did it deliberately to get back at her husband, the engineer. The engineer said the last thing he saw was his children looking up at him from the windows of the car.
Although this is a work of fiction, and this is just a story between two, make believe people, I felt compelled to tell his story about how utterly and completely devastating this would be. The engineer was never able to return to work after this.
Author Links:
Website: https://kuhlreads.com/
Author Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/kuhlreads
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lynettehoff1
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/lynettehofferbe/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/l.k.kuhl/
Blogger: http://kuhlreads.blogspot.com/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28674602-everlasting
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B01BXDJGIY
