Four years ago today, D.L. Kane was born. Sort of.
I use my real name for my professional career. Newspapers, magazines, web articles… All of that is written under the name on my driver’s license. But all of those pieces are news reports or fact based opinion articles. They adhere to strict formatting and reference guidelines. A novel is in a world all it’s own, and when I decided to write mine a hundred million years ago (ok, its more like five, it just feels longer) I realized that my creativity and the flow of my story was being stunted. I was trying to apply the standards drilled into my head by editors at the paper, Demand and Yahoo to a fiction romance. That doesn’t really work. You can’t exactly “reference” a moment the Hero became a total douche canoe. In fact, you can’t even use the words “douche canoe” in a sentence. So I decided I needed to have an alter ego. A classy, carefree chick with a spirit as wild as the wind. Someone who didn’t have rules or boundaries. Someone who could do whatever the hell she wanted without having to answer for it. Oh, and she had to be Bettie Page hot with perfect boobs and great butt 😉
Once I had a mental image of my alter ego, she needed a name. I thought at first to use a play on the German variation of my real name, but then I looked down into my living room. The four people that matter most to me in the world were curled up on the couch watching Napoleon Dynamite. And that’s when it hit. So I started an online search, just to make sure the name I chose was available. I hit a road block when I tried to set up an email account with it, and ended up adding an extra I. Which was fine at the time, but it would change again later.
On July 7, 2010, I hit “Send” on my first completed manuscript. An hour later, Danie Kaine walked out of the print shop with a bound manuscript. I officially became a romance fiction author!! The pride I was feeling that day is hard to describe. I had already accomplished so much with my writing career that this was like frosting on the cake. Really yummy, homemade cream cheese frosting with just a touch of Malibu (…for flavor…) I mean, I wrote a book!!! A whole book!!! For me!!! That last part sounds kind of silly right? But here’s the thing- I spend 90% of my time writing stuff for other people. We call them “assignments” and they do pay the bills, but there are days I really don’t feel like explaining Kansas Family Code to laymen, or describing in full, referenced detail how to install a double barrel carburetor to somebody who is probably going to hire a mechanic anyway. And as much as I love the whales, there are only so many articles one can write encouraging you to save them.
So yeah! Writing a book that was all mine was AWESOME!!
And some day, I’ll have a really good explanation for why said book STILL isn’t published. Someday… 😉
So anyhow, I know it’s not Thursday, but here’s my throw back 🙂 The Copyright page from the original manuscript of The Broken Road.
I’ve had the good fortune to make many friends in the author community who have been excellent mentors and support. Through their advice and guidance, I decided to not only change my pen name to D.L. Kane (the name I originally chose) but the title of my book and the series. Shattered Dreams replaces The Broken Road as the title for my first book and I am happy to say it will be out this month 🙂
And because I love music…. The song that inspired the book 🙂
Indie Musings 