Kim McMahill

"We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road / the one less traveled by / offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth."   Rachel Carson

N. N. Light’s Book Heaven is celebrating their 10 th anniversary with a huge party, and I am one of the sixty authors featured. I talk about what I was doing ten years ago, what I’m doing now, how many books I’ve published, and I’m offering a very cool prize. Join in the fun and good luck! The giveaway is open internationally and runs March 1 – 31, 2025. Drawing will be held on April 1, 2025. Enter for the giveaway below and check back every day for new author posts: https://www.nnlightsbookheaven.com/n-n-lights-book-heaven-party a Rafflecopter giveaway

  Here’s an Irish Blessing for you. Have a great St. Patrick’s Day! May the Irish hills caress you. May her lakes and rivers bless you. May the luck of the Irish enfold you. May the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you.  May there always be work for your hands to do, May your purse always hold a coin or two. May the sun always shine warm on your windowpane, May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain. May the hand of a friend always be near you, And may God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.

February was a brutal month in Wyoming. We always have a lot of wind, so when nearly twenty inches of snow dropped early in the month along with extended periods of single-digit day-time highs, it made for a rough start. Here’s hoping you had milder weather and March brings more sunshine. WRITING I’ve been in kind of a hold pattern on the next book in The Beartooth Chronicles, Evil Under the Mountain . My editor is working through the last round of edits, and we’re probably looking at a couple more reads after that. The cover is still in the design phase, but it still looks like we’re on target for an April 2025 release. The fifth novel in the series, Winter Resurgence, should come out in September 2025. If you still haven’t jumped into this series, the first two novels are available to download at reduced prices from major online book retailers or from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DMV1QS9Q/   Since I don’t have a lot of writing news to report this month, it’s a ...

I often mention how important reviews are to me, so I thought it would be nice to copy and paste reviews every now and then. This one for Refuge from the World (The Beartooth Chronicles, Book 1) was copied from Amazon. 5.0 out of 5 stars   Chilling YA Dystopian Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2024 This is a wonderful, YA dystopian book for fans of Hunger Games. It depicts a future society dealing with the chilling consequences of global warming. The main character, Ashley, lives in Beartooth, a small mountaintop community, with her mother, Sara. Their town is separate and independent from the rest of the USA, including the government. But as the state of the world worsens, governments contemplate using a potentially devastating scientific experiment to cool the planet. The residents of Beartooth worry about the survival of their crops and beehives, and they also fear their small community will be discovered and attacked by outside groups looking to control their s...

I love to travel, to see the world, to learn about other cultures. But there is so much more to travel than beaches, pretty scenery, or exciting activities, it’s also about changing the way we see the world and our place in it. On one of my favorite PBS travel shows, the host closes each episode with the following quote. It struck a chord with me, so I have part of the quote in my blog header. Here is the rest.    “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain

Book Reviews serve a variety of purposes and are very important to readers and writers. Reviews help other readers choose books. A review provides information about a book that a marketing blurb may not. Sales and reviews factor into a bookseller’s algorithm. Mo`re book sales and reviews help a book achieve a higher ranking on a bookseller’s site, which provides more exposure for a book and its author. Additionally, more reviews may get authors noticed by book clubs, blogging communities, book review sites, and other promotional venues. Lastly, many authors do read reviews and may find helpful feedback in articulate reviews to improve their craft. For example, saying “I hated the book” isn’t helpful, but explaining that you find multiple points of view confusing, there were too many grammatical errors, there was too much detail and it slowed the story down, or there was too much profanity, gives the author feedback to consider. Conversely, pointing out what you liked about a book i...