Jane Austen completed "Persuasion" in August 1816. It was to be her last book. She left us with the story of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth and she left them approaching "happily ever after." What happens the day following "happily ever after?"The story of Kellynch picks up three years after the couple married and were able to secure the Kellynch estate from Sir Walter and Cousin William Elliot agreed to waive the entailment.It would seem all is well with the young couple, but all is not as it seems. Kellynch is a story of deceit and treachery as well as courage and overcoming the odds. It is a story in which those who were assumed to be friends are not and where support comes from unexpected places. Love again, will, be tested in a story set against the backdrop of historical events. Throughout the book, I have remained true to the characters as Miss Austen created them. I sought to develop and introduce new characters that would meet with her approval.
About the Author: When describing my life, I think Douglas Adams said it best, "I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I have ended up where I needed to be." Books have always been a large part of my meandering. I grew up on a ranch in southeastern Idaho and my friends were a mixed and rowdy bunch. Louis L'Amour told me tales of the west, but Edgar Rice Burroughs took me to the jungles of Africa. Sir Author Conan Doyle walked with me through the fog-covered streets of London, and Jane Austen taught me to be a gentleman. I read several other authors but I was fourteen when I met the man. Sitting in an English class, I chose a book from a required reading list and I was introduced to Ernest Hemingway. His book, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," allowed Mister Hemingway, Robert Jordan, and I to fight in the Spanish Civil War and I never left Idaho. When I closed the back cover, I knew that no matter whatever else I did, I would be a writer. Even today, when I think back, I am still in awe of how Hemingway's words touched the soul of an adolescent boy. I entered the Army a year after high school and stayed in uniform for the next two decades. The military offered me the opportunity to live my own adventures separate from the ones I lived vicariously in books. While in uniform, I worked in a variety of fields, Infantry, Military Police, and Military Intelligence. I worked on a psychiatric ward and later at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. I took trips to Mexico, Canada, and twice to Germany. I have visited the forty-eight contiguous states and desperately want to see the other two. I started to write and failed. Repeatedly, I would start a story, only to end it and discard it as it sounded too much like the works of one of my friends. I went through periods when I refused to read, because I was frustrated and angry with those friends. Those friends who were what I wanted to be. Fifteen years ago, I got sick. Deathly sick and as I got better and my brain got stronger, stories, characters, and plots started to form. I found my voice and I published my first book, a novella called "Dear Emma," in February 2012. I used to feel strange telling people, "I got better and now I hear voices," but the statement is accurate. I feel I am in good company as several authors have made such references. As I said at the beginning, I am exactly where I need to be.