Please welcome, friend and author, Rosemary J Kind..

...to the blog this week.  Hello rosemary and thanks for being here.  Tell me, what is your current release?

RJK  The Blight and the Blarney – it’s a novella and is available as a free download. I’ve written it as a prequel to The Tales of Flynn and Reilly telling the story of how Daniel’s family came to leave Ireland and head for America.

AW   What first got you into writing and why?

RJK  From the day I could control a pen I’ve needed to write – anything, everything. For me it’s an essential outlet and not doing it would be unthinkable.  I was brought up on literature and surrounded by poetry, novels, short stories and non-fiction.  My mum and I would quote favourite lines to each other.  Reading and writing are as much a part of my life as breathing.

AW  You write historical, contemporary novels, humour and non-fiction.  Is it all imagination or do you also undertake research?

RJK  There is an awful lot of research, especially for my historical novels.  For that matter my non-fiction has taken years of learning a subject before I’ve gone on to write about it.  I don’t like there to be factual inaccuracies if they can possibly be avoided, but that can mean many hours of trying to track down specific pieces of information.  One that took me quite a while was trying to find out when pay and display car parks first came into operation!  With historical fiction it is much harder as some of the information you need has not apparently been preserved.  Then you have to decide how much of a risk there is in making something up only to find there was a source but you just hadn’t managed to find it.

AW  And what about other types of writing?  Have you ever dabbled with short stories, for instance, or other genres?

Alfie

RJK  Yes, I’ve not only written short stories but for six years ran one of the biggest short story download sites in the world, which I’d built from scratch.  We had the privilege to launch quite a number of writing careers.  I also write what has been listed as being one of the UK’s top ten pet blogs for the last few years.  I’ve written it every day for over thirteen years and only started it as a bit of fun.  Alfie, my dog whose diary it is, also has his own political party so has co-authored with me the Pet Dogs Democratic Party Manifesto amongst other things.

I’ve written a crime novel, a contemporary novel and other humorous books too.  Now I’m enjoying focusing on historical fiction.

AW  Famous authors, such as Roald Dahl and Dylan Thomas, had a special space for writing.  Do you have a writing ‘shed’ of your own?

8yr old rosemary

RJK  No, I can write anywhere and often do.  I’ve written in hotels, on public benches, even while walking the dog if something has come to me.  I travel a lot so need to be able to write wherever I am.

AW   Finally, what would your eight-year old self think of, and say about, you today?

RJK My eight-year-old self was a precocious child.  She’d be thrilled and excited about where I’ve got to, but want to do it better and faster and what’s worse she’d truly believe she could.  She still drives me.  I’m pleased to say we’re still on speaking terms.  She does remind me to stop and pick daisies and buttercups now and again and never fails to want to make friends with every passing dog.  I think I’ve become the person she wanted to be and she’d be proud of that.

...about the book  Ireland has suffered from potato blight since 1845.  Friends and neighbours have died, been evicted or given up what little land they have in search of alms.  Michael Flynn is one of the lucky ones.  His landlord has offered support.

Michael and his family have done all they can to help their immediate household, but as the famine and its aftermath continue, have their efforts been enough?

With the weakening brought about by hunger, there are some things he is powerless to protect his family from.  Is it time for the great Michael Flynn to take his family in search of a better life?

...about the author  Rosemary J Kind writes because she has to.  You could take almost anything away from her except her pen and paper.  Failing to stop after the book that everyone has in them, she has gone on to publish books in both non-fiction and fiction, the latter including novels, humour, short stories and poetry.  She also regularly produces magazine articles in a number of areas and writes regularly for the dog press.

As a child she was desolate when at the age of 10 her then teacher would not believe that her poem based on ‘Stig of the Dump’ was her own work and she stopped writing poetry for several years as a result.  She was persuaded to continue by the invitation to earn a little extra pocket money by ‘assisting’ others to produce the required poems for English homework!

Always one to spot an opportunity, she started school newspapers and went on to begin providing paid copy to her local newspaper at the age of 16.

For twenty years she followed a traditional business career, before seeing the error of her ways and leaving it all behind to pursue her writing full-time.

She spends her life discussing her plots with the characters in her head and her faithful dogs, who always put the opposing arguments when there are choices to be made.

Always willing to take on challenges that sensible people regard as impossible, she established and ran the short story download site Alfie Dog Fiction for six years building it to become one of the largest in the world, representing over 300 authors and carrying over 1600 short stories.  She closed it in order to focus on her own writing.

Her hobby is developing the Entlebucher Mountain Dog in the UK and when she brought her beloved Alfie back from Belgium he was only the tenth in the country.

She started writing Alfie’s Diary as an Internet blog the day Alfie arrived to live with her, intending to continue for a year or two.  Thirteen years later it goes from strength to strength and has been repeatedly named as one of the top ten pet blogs in the UK.

You can follow Alfie on his Blog and on Twitter

You can buy Rosemary's books from Amazon and you can follow her on  LinkedIn  Instagram  Facebook  and on her Website