Member Spotlight: Kay Smith-Blum

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? It took me a while to come to this place where I can write full time and after 3 successful careers – retail fashion, school board director and mother of three sons – I wanted to get it right. Writing each morning centers me and the days -which are rare- when I cannot begin in a story are harder to move through. Reading has that effect on me as well. I consider my own writing a success if a reader tells me it resonates with them. As I work to improve my craft, I’ve come to realize how powerful language can be. I avoid cliches in my writing, but changing the world with a story is not out of the question.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? I’m an avid gardener and amateur landscape designer. An afternoon of pruning, weeding, transplanting always puts my head right. I’m also a lap swimmer, and on any given day, about the half hour mark in my swim, answers present themselves.

What is your favorite time to write? Early morning. I am up with the sun or before it in winter. Watching the sunrise is of value to my work. It always inspires, and if you follow me on Instagram you’ll see why.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Compress. Less truly is more. I’ve read so many stories that get mired in overwriting or just way too many There was’s or He dids. Wasted words are annoying and I’ve been fortunate to have taken craft classes to help hone my stories to their essence.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? Debunking 20th-century tropes of the “perfect family” or “perfect town” is a goal in all my stories, but daylighting corporate malfeasance is my jam. Though I typically write historical fiction, the undercurrent of all my manuscripts is greed and corruption. Bad actors exist in business and government. I believe we are about to see an unprecedented time of such actiivity and I hope to shine a spotlight on those that might be hornswoggling the public.

Kay Smith-Blum’s Tangles is out now with ‎Black Rose Writing.