Hello there, I’m Kristine —
novelist, wife, and mother of three.
Life, I believe, is a lot of what we make of the unexpected.
It’s learning that to say “never” opens you up, in the end, to say “well… perhaps...”
Perhaps… one day, you pick up a guitar as a teen and turn your childhood love of pen and paper into songwriting. Later, you move to a town known for music and fall in love with very much not a musician. You get a degree in the music business, but the idea of working with college students is kindled. Graduation from your master’s program takes place during a recession, so you pick up a camera. Photos for friends turn into weddings and portraits for clients. You land a job in your field of study, but you have a business to build and long to be a mother. The children come and the work picks up and one day, you decide if you’re ever going to write, something has to give. Something gives and eventually the stories come, but not in the way you imagined. The world turns upside down and you shore up your nest for a handful of years of teaching the kids at home.
My path has been anything but linear, but I’m grateful for every step.
And now? Well, we’ll see…
These days, I write between the margins of school days at home with one, school drop-offs and pickups for two, orthodontist appointments, sports practices, and other assorted activities of homemaking. After a rollercoaster round of querying agents for my first novel, The Other Side of Hope, I’ve taken a beat to revise the work and to continue drafting my second novel With You Everywhere.
My work is upmarket women’s fiction, which means I write the kind of books I hope you’ll read with and talk about endlessly in your book club.
I’m an introvert who exists comfortably alone, but has learned to need her people. I love great coffee and hot cups of milky tea, especially shared with the ones I love. I live for dates with my husband of seventeen years and our kids are so cool and so fully themselves, I want to be like them when I grow up. Almost two years ago, we brought home a pup who literally walked right out my dreams and into our life. Some days, he drives me absolutely bananas.
When I’m excited about something, you’ll know it. I love what I love, but I’m quiet about what I don’t. I collect books and vinyl and great gin and am happy to wax poetic about all three. The list of music I love is far too long for this space, but my tastes are eclectic and varied. Character-driven novels are my absolute favorite to read, and I think Fredrik Backman could write the copy on a package of toilet paper and I’d read it and probably still cry.
Traveling around the country and the world, taking road trips with my family, and learning about new places to visit are some of my favorite hobbies. I study maps like it’s my job. And when I can’t travel, I love getting lost in story at the movies because few things hold the magic of a giant silverscreen, a tub of buttery popcorn, and an icy Cherry Coke in hand.
Why “My Pen in the Air”?
In her poem “I Happened to be Standing,” Mary Oliver ponders the constitution of prayers: what they are, where they go, and what they do. Mary was famous for paying attention to the tiniest details in nature, for tucking pencils into trees around Provincetown, for bringing us to tears, and for helping us to see.
I don’t know about you, but:
I know I can walk through the world,
along the shore or under the trees,
with my mind filled with things
of little importance, in full
self-attendance. A condition I can’t really
call being alive.
And I don’t like it, that self-attendance.
But we live in a world in which it’s rampant, and choosing to turn away feels a whole lot like swimming upstream. Often, the weariness of going against the current compels me to pull myself, soaking wet and gasping for breath, up the muddy banks of the river.
I lay there in a heap, my light long-since gone out. It feels like sitting on the sidelines.
While I was thinking this I happened to be standing
just outside my door, with my notebook open,
which is the way I begin every morning.
Last summer, I experienced what I might dare to call a renaissance, and I missed connecting with the people who’ve supported my creative leanings over the years. I’ve learned it’s okay to have something to say, but the manner in which it’s shared has to feel real and good and true and beautiful to me.
Which brings me to this place.
I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe
or whatever you don’t. That’s your business.
But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be
if it isn’t a prayer?
So I just listened, my pen in the air.
And I’m so happy to be here, listening and sharing.
Why subscribe?
Every post goes out entirely free to all subscribers, though my more personal essays may eventually be quietly tucked behind a paywall, mostly to protect what is closest to my core.
You may notice I have paid subscriptions open, thanks to the gentle, generous nudges of a few readers who pledged contributions to my work long before I’d even produced much content. If you have the means and feel so led, your investment in my dreams is more than welcome but not required.
Writing, for me, is the cake and the icing; compensation is truly the cherry on top.
