Spring 2025: The Start of a Very Busy Year

Better late than never! Right?

Do all of you remember cassette players? Lately, life has felt like someone pressed the fast-forward button because time is just flying by. The long days before the solstice help, but I would love to slow things down.

In February, Chris and I had an unforgettable experience in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Neither of us wanted to come home. It truly opened our eyes to how lucky we are to have the opportunity to travel and see the world, so we are planning our next adventure very soon. Speaking of grand adventures, we are currently finalizing the details of our small ceremony in the mountains, but I don’t think I realized how much planning it takes to elope! Good thing I am only doing this once. The only thing left now is to apply for our wedding license. For the most part, marriage has been a forgone conclusion between us, but I truly cannot wait to marry this man. He is, simply put, my very best friend.

It was his idea to build a writing studio for me, which we completed last month. I have moved in and am currently typing this from my own dedicated workspace. I feel very lucky to have a partner so supportive of my dreams. With that being said, and the big projects out of the way, I have begun editing my third novel, Beartooth. Completing the first draft took longer than expected and, at present, I have no timeline for the second draft. Once I am nearing a point of completion, I will be looking for beta-readers. Please let me know if you are interested.

In other exciting news, and there has been so much, Wonderland was runner-up for the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Commercial Fiction. It was also short-listed for the grand prize and short-listed for the First Horizon Award. This is a big accomplishment, and I hope it expands the audience for my debut novel.

Both Wonderland and Lester are available to purchase at Grit City Books in Tacoma. Check them out at: https://www.gritcitybooks.com/ They have recently partnered with the Tacoma Humane Society for a Read to Rabbits event and have a full calendar of Pride events for the month of June. I am happy to have a working relationship with another indie bookstores, so please, if you are in the area, stop in and show your support. Same goes for all the local book dealers, notably The Dusty Shelf in Enumclaw, A Good Book in Sumner, and King’s Books in Tacoma.

Also, I can’t believe I forgot to mention it in my winter newsletter, but I was featured on the podcast By Its Cover back in December. It was a riot sitting down with Katie and Jake to talk about Wonderland. I was so grateful for the opportunity and am hopeful I will have a chance to return (fingers crossed). Give it a listen: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5U9ZnRxyNSR52qfnC9meiH?si=0FGAQFt4TcaiazY51NIMCw

June 7th (tomorrow)  I will be appearing alongside a gathering of local authors at The Dusty Shelf during the Enumclaw Beer Walk. Please come by any time after 4pm to say hello.

Winter 2025: Lessons Learned

Happy New Year!

Are we really a full month into 2025? Wow, that happened fast. I hope each of you survived the holiday season and spent it surrounded by love and light. I shared a peaceful holiday with people who have consistently demonstrated their support for me, and I am immensely grateful for their presence in my life.

We’ve nearly reached the three-month anniversary of Lester’s release and what a ride it has been! I’ve been working on Lester since early 2023. Nearing the end of 2024, I was impatient to bring my “second-born” into the world, so I decided on a release date to motivate me to finish. Writing a novel is a slow process in a fast world. The decision to work toward my arbitrary deadline before the manuscript was completed resulted in several mistakes along the way.

The first error, realized within a week of submission, was that my first printed copies were missing page numbers on the last few pages of the book. This would likely not be noticed by anyone except myself, but I made the correction and gifted the first batch of “mutants”. One of those copies went to a dear friend, Isolation author Jared Grace (check out his website https://www.authorjaredg.com/, you won’t be disappointed). The day before Thanksgiving, he contacted me to ask if I was aware that my book was missing chapter four. I was not.

So, the Great Lester Upheaval of 2024 began. I pulled copies from The Dusty Shelf and contacted my readers to withdraw and replace their incomplete copies. To my surprise, the majority of you were determined to retain the errored copy, citing it would be valuable someday. In the face of such a glaring error, this demonstrated a massive vote of confidence in my ability as a writer. Thank you all for believing in me.

In the end, it taught me an important lesson: there is no rushing book publication. I put a great deal of pressure on myself to meet my self-determined deadline, and I missed obvious errors in my body of work. In terms of cost, it was a minor issue to resolve, but it dampened the emotional impact of Lester’s release.

I would like to say that the support from my family, friends, and readers left me confident and assured of my ability as I embark on my continued journey as a writer, but the truth is, the completion of Lester has left me with an immense feeling of self-doubt. I wanted this book to be as successful as Wonderland, perhaps even more so and yet, it has languished in both sales and reviews. I suppose this is the so-called “sophomore slump” and nothing more than Lester has struggled to find its audience. I will continue to harbor hope that by next Halloween, Lester will be the horror sleeper hit of the year, and I am again confronted with the same message: be patient.

With all that in mind, rather than rush the first draft of my third manuscript, I instead chose to extend my writing break and consider my goals for 2025. I was ambitiously planning a late summer release for my third novel, but my partner brought me back down to earth. Chris and I are travelling to Mexico and finishing my writing studio in the spring. Additionally, we are planning a summer wedding and are hoping for an extended honeymoon before year end.

With everything on my plate, I have decided to try a different approach with my next novel. I plan on querying this manuscript with an agent. My goal would be to land an opportunity to be picked up by a publishing house. As much as I love indie publishing, I have decided to at least make an attempt at this course now that I am better established. The primary goal for my writing career has always been to become a full-time writer and this is the best path forward.

I hope to release a short story or two this year to keep you dear readers engaged, but given my prioritization on my personal life, I cannot promise a release this year. I will continue to hope that Lester will find its audience and that Wonderland will break new ground. Thank you again for all of your support.

Fall 2024: Lester Release

Happy Halloween!

It’s been quite a while since my last update. I hope you enjoyed Lester’s sneak peek back in June, but it wasn’t much of an update.

I do enjoy the ability to speak directly to my readers but also find that I struggle with the marketing aspect of my burgeoning writing career. Producing new content is a difficult process and can be wholly unrewarding. Sometimes, I would prefer to be notoriously reclusive like Harper Lee. I guess I will have to write a bestseller. In order to give 100% of my focus to completing my second novel, Lester, I have stepped away from social media these last few months, and that choice included this newsletter. My apologies. I had intended to provide monthly updates but decided, going forward, a quarterly format for long-form updates like this would be more appropriate. I will send periodic, short updates if there is news or upcoming events for my readers.

As for today’s big news: Lester is live! My second novel Lester released on October 29th, and it is free to download on Kindle today! Lester is my first horror novel about the very real ghost town of Lester and the paranormal research team that travels there to investigate it. Talia Michaels has a connection to Lester. When she is confronted with its dark secret, she is left with the choice to escape her fate or face it.

I originally had the idea for Lester while hiking the Snoquera Falls Trail on a gloomy PNW day in November 2021. I was working on my manuscript of Wonderland at the time, but my journals quickly filled with notes. It’s exciting to finally bring this idea into existence and see the final form it has taken. I started work in January of 2023. While my beta-readers had Wonderland, I wrote out Talia’s childhood experiences, and the first six chapters of the main narrative. I took a brief break while completing, and releasing, Wonderland and have been working on Lester ever since.

My next event will be at the Enumclaw Wine Walk on November 16th. I will be at The Dusty Shelf, along with a number of other local authors. You don’t have to participate in the Wine Walk to stop by and peruse the available books. Lester will be available exclusively on Amazon or from The Dusty Shelf until after November 23rd when it will be available to order from all bookstores.

Lester will be free to download on Kindle on November 16th and 17th if you miss today’s free day and will be available again before the season is out. I will be holding another event at The Dusty Shelf, and hopefully others, in the months to come.

This book was a learning experience. First, I understand now how important it is to protect my peace. Emotional upheaval is destructive to my creative process, and I will continue to put measures in place to ensure I prioritize myself, my family, and my passion. Second, I will never again work to a deadline unless I am under contract. I decided I wanted to release Lester by Halloween and although I achieved that goal, I will never do that again. While there were some tangible reasons why I wanted to release my novel before the end of the year, some were based on my own arbitrary expectations of myself. I started 2024 with the ambitious goal of completing two novels, and in hindsight, it is completely laughable how unrealistic that goal was. Good works take time and I expect this year, with so many exciting things coming, I will need to give my process the room and space it needs to breathe.

Which brings me to my last and final piece of news: I am set to complete the first draft of my third novel, Beartooth, before the year is out. I have a very tentative goal to release by the end of 2025, preferably by Thanksgiving, but there is also the very real possibility I will shop this novel with an agent to see if traditional publishing is my future direction. We shall see.

I hope you all enjoy the holidays. My next update will be January 31st! I hope to see some of your face in the weeks to come.

Happy Trails!

Kimberly Wheelock

January 2024: An Update on Lester

I started an editing phase at the beginning of January for my novel Lester, and I had hoped to wrap it up in mid-March. This date was based on an ambitious timeline, one I felt was attainable with consistent effort. Things were progressing well ahead of deadline. The light at the end of the tunnel looked like it was easily within reach. And then once again, all hell breaks loose.

I am starting to think this book is cursed.

Lester is a real-life ghost town hidden in the woods, reachable only on foot. The most curious part to me is how it appears this once booming city has been shut down by powers beyond its control because the town had the misfortune of being within the Green River Watershed. Through systematic action and legislation, progress wiped Lester off the map.

The last buildings remaining in Lester were demolished in 2017. The narrative is they presented a hazard to public safety, miles and miles into the woods. It is an eerie thing to find gates and yards of fencing with barbed wire on the only road that can access the old townsite. They are serious about how they handle trespassers. Hot springs are a fascination of mine, and I discovered that a hotel existed in the late 1800’s around a collection of thermal pools in Lester. This hotel tragically burnt down. The hot springs were well known and popular, and I have it on good authority, they have since been destroyed. When I started putting all the pieces together, it truly begged the question: what are they hiding back there?

In my novel, the town of Lester is a place where bad things happen, as if the existence of the place itself demands it. I am starting to believe I have drawn that energy to me. The dark forces at play against Lester are working on my life.

The development of this book has been plagued with problems and interruptions. I’m starting to feel cursed. After I began work on it last June, there were a number of occurrences that seemed meant to deter me. In June, I was required to move, and a family member was hospitalized. One of my loved ones was in a car accident in July. Luckily, they were unharmed. August was a happy time between my vacation and engagement, but it was swiftly followed by a period of disturbance between members of my family that impacted my work for months. When I was nearing the end of the first draft and trying to complete it before my second move, I experienced an anomalous infestation: hornets coming into my home in the middle of November.

After I completed the first draft and I took time away from the manuscript, things calmed. There were nearly four weeks between November and December where things grew peaceful. But I kid you not when I tell you the very day I printed this draft for editing, I became ill, which was followed by the hospitalization of a family member and an unfortunate, but completely necessary, estrangement.

It’s starting to feel there are forces at work trying to prevent this story from being written, and there has been a growing fear I have stumbled upon something that does not want to be exposed. While I believe it has become more important than ever to make sure this book is published, I am concerned that future attacks will be made against my reputation or me, personally, to deter me. I feel compelled to continue and will persist as long as I am able. My only hope is that bringing this project into the light of day will protect me.  

December 2023: The Precipice of a New Year

We have once again arrived at the precipice of a new year. After the emotional charge of the holidays, I am grateful to be turning the page. For me, this is a time filled with hope and promise. Not only do I get to fall back into the natural rhythm of life, but I review the past year and set goals for the year to come.

2023 was a wild year. The excitement of reaching a lifelong dream of publishing a novel and getting engaged to the love of my life were catalysts to a great deal of change in my life. There was so much positive growth, but change can also be exhausting. Reaching the end of the year felt like finishing a marathon. In 2024, there are talks of marriage and vacationing to sunny locales. Both possibilities are exciting to consider. Obviously, there will be at least one book to publish, and if I put in the time, I hope to make that two before the year is out. I am only beginning to grasp the undertaking I am committing to. My hope is this time around, I have the benefit of experience and that will aid me as I pursue this goal.

I finished reviewing the first draft of Lester. I am less than enthusiastic about the next phase because I am not happy with what I have produced. Good thing it’s a first draft. There are aspects of the novel that are excellent and need a simple fine tuning, but the main narrative is not striking the right tone. It is evident to me where the storyline is disjointed and contradictory and which sections were rushed or under-developed. As I stated before, 2023 was a big year, and I can see that reflected in the quality of my work. I will begin rewrites for my second draft within the next few days.

While pursuing a career in writing continues to be my main goal, in the coming year I have two others that have been dominating my thoughts. These are less about building something new, but rather rebuilding things that were lost. Many of you know about my love of hiking and in the last couple years, that hobby has fallen to the wayside due to health issues and a focus on reaching my life’s dream of publishing a novel. Being out in the forest was a way of meeting that connection between both body and spirit, and I would like to get both of those things back. In the coming year, I will be dedicating some of my energies to rebuilding my physical strength. There’s no better way to say this, but the mountains are calling.

The spirituality piece is a tricky thing for me to navigate. I found it late in life and have always felt my relationship with my Higher Power was difficult to consistently connect to. I have moved away from the tools I once relied on, and I believe I am suffering for that lack of connection. It’s time to reevaluate what is missing and what needs to grow. I would like to restore that former connection because it truly was a beautiful thing.

To clarify, when I refer to a Higher Power, I am referring to the sense that there is more to this mortal coil than what I can touch with my hand. The idea that there is something that lives in my heart that can’t be formed into words or made tangible. Some of you might find that in God and religion, and some of us find it in other ways, but every way in which we connect to something greater than ourselves is worthy.

Thank you to all of you who shown their support to me this last year. It has been invaluable in pushing me forward and despite my own mental blocks, I am always grateful for people who show up and actively demonstrate their love and care. Thank you.

I wish to all of my followers a safe and happy new year.

Kimberly

November 2023: Better Late Than Never

Better late than never! November was quite the month! My newsletter is now in circulation. Anyone who signs up will receive an exclusive advcance chapter of Lester before it is released. Sign up for my newsletter on my homepage.

For the second time this year, I packed up all of my worldly belongings and moved to share a home with my best friend and fiancé. While this was always the plan, our circumstances had changed considerably so we decided to advance the timeline from June 2024 to now. I had some apprehension about the decision because of the usual disruption it would cause, but the biggest source of my concern was that I wanted to finish the first draft of my second novel, Lester, before I uprooted my life again.

For a little context, I started Lester back in January. I completed about six chapters before I began edits on Wonderland in March that continued until its release in May. Over the summer, my focus was divided between events and marketing for Wonderland, moving in June, a vacation in August, and life just throwing things my way. It was difficult to get into a regular writing practice for Lester. When Chris suggested I move in by December 1st, I was worried if the draft was paused again, it would be too hard to get my bearings back to complete it after another interruption. Instead, I chose to push forward and finish before the move.

Now with the first draft complete, I am concerned about how much work will be required to develop the second draft. Between the unstructured approach I took to writing Lester and rushing the final sections, I already know there are weak points and plot inconsistencies that will need to be shored up. The story is lacking, and I know it. This is why we edit. The content of the novel required a massive undertaking as I chose to write every chapter in two sections: a story about the history of Lester or my POV character and then the other half back to the main narrative. It is a different type of novel than Wonderland, but one that I hope those who follow my writing will enjoy just the same. Lester’s first draft has three times the word count of Wonderland’s, a fact I uncovered while writing this newsletter. That alone helps me set aside some of my misgivings about how well I executed the first draft. Over the Christmas holiday, I will complete my first read through before I begin my second draft.

Between the completion of Lester and my move, I have begun to settle in and am incredibly happy we made the decision to join households rather than wait. After spending so many years living apart because life just is what it is, it brings me so much peace to share a home with my best friend.

Which brings me to my last bit of good news, I have started work on my third novel. In truth, I had about half a manuscript already complete. I decided to take an online “Write your First Novel” class during the height of the pandemic in late 2020. The idea had been brewing in my mind since we had gone to Yellowstone in 2019. Unfortunately, things being what they are, I was thwarted by doubt in my capabilities. I put the novel aside half-finished with the hope I would return to it. I honestly did not believe I could bring it into the world the way I wanted to at that time. Now, I know I can. Tentatively, if I am able to release Lester mid-2024, I have hopes to release my third novel “Beartooth” late 2024 or early 2025, but then again, my better judgment says I am being a little overzealous.

It's a lot of news, and I will be very busy this next year, in fact the plans Chris and I have made together, we are laying a path for a lot of things to come. But first, a peaceful end to a busy year.

October 2023: An Update

A view of Grinnell Glacier

After publishing Wonderland in May, life has not stopped throwing me new experiences and surprises.

I moved into a new place, watched my child graduate from college, took a vacation, and got engaged! My best intentions to spend the summer hiking and working on the first draft of my next novel were both thwarted by all the changes, but I am definitely not complaining.

Our vacation to Glacier National Park in August was amazing. This makes for our third trip to the park in six years. We finally visited Waterton Park, stayed in a cute little cabin, and rode horses in the Bob Marshall Wilderness (The BOB), along with several hikes and boat tours. Chris really made this happen with no help from me. When we found ourselves alone on the banks of Upper Two Medicine Lake, Chris proposed. It was a perfect moment. I really am lucky to have him, and I cannot wait to write our future together.

Now in October, Wonderland’s sales have begun to slow, but I think for a debut self-published novel, it has been a smashing success. In total, Wonderland has been ordered 5,931 times on Amazon alone. Granted, the majority of these were free copies offered on promotion, those still equate to readers. The Kindle Unlimited readers finished a whopping 139,751 pages of Wonderland which translates to nearly 725 reads. The physical copies are still selling, and I am restocking The Dusty Shelf every few weeks. My next goal for Wonderland is to produce an audiobook.

Most important of all is Lester. I am still in the “shitty first draft” phase and while I had hoped to have a completed draft before we left for Glacier, moving into a new place pushed that deadline considerably. Presently, I am 70% of the way through. I am hopeful to complete this draft mid-November. This manuscript has been more difficult than I anticipated. Not only has a significant amount of energy gone into tracking down information about the town, but I have chosen to interweave that history alongside the main narrative. The result is writing the main plot and multiple short stories in order to bring the story elements together. It’s a lot to keep track of. We may not see Lester in its final form until the Summer of 2024 as I suspect life will have more to throw at me. On the bright side, when I complete my second draft edit, those of you signed up for my newsletter will receive a sneak peak of the one of the chapters.

A couple short updates. In addition to a monthly newsletter, in November I will be going live with my website. I have been hard at work on that project during the fall months. On November 4th, I will be appearing alongside several local authors at The Dusty Shelf for the Enumclaw Wine Walk from 4pm to 7pm. I will be signing books and handing out the amazing stickers my dear friend Nicole made.

Thank you so much for following my journey!