#JuNoWriMo Featured Author: Missy Kirtley @MissyKirtley

Meet some of your fellow JuNo WriMos in our Featured Author series each Monday and Wednesday starting June 4. ~

Background

My name is Missy Kirtley.  I’m a writer.  I’m also a housewife and a mother.  I’m in my thirties, live in the Bay Area, California, am college educated, and I love cats.  I’ve been telling stories since before I could actually hold a pen in my hand.  The first piece that I had published was an article for the local paper called “Santa Claus is Magic” when I was in the fourth grade.  Since then I’ve been going nonstop.  I studied screenwriting in college, and was planning to move down to LA to make movies before I met my husband.  Career went off track as I got married and had babies.  I’ve won NaNoWriMo three years running, and just finished Camp NaNoWriMo this year for the first time.

JuNoWriMo Plans

The collection I’m working on right now is called “The Royals” and it’s a set of seven contemporary short stories inspired by classic fairy tales.  Each story is around 12,000 words long (post-editing), and the first two have been written and edited.  I’m in the process of writing the third, though I’m not sure I’ll have it completed by the time June starts.

The Royal Family’s fortune came from the Royal Car Company, founded by Charles Royal the first.  His son took over the company, married, and had six children.  As close to American Royalty as possible, due to the fame and fortune of the company that bears their name, the children grew up in the spotlight.  How much or how little it affected them is yet to be seen.

In my writing class I was encouraged to push myself out of my comfort zone.  I’ve been writing and editing my NaNoWriMo novels (a Contemporary Supernatural series) for so long that I felt it was time to take a break and try something new.  These stories may be inspired by fairy tales, but there is nothing magical about them.  Just characters and situations set in the real world–that we can all relate to.  As soon as I started writing them, I fell in love with the characters.  I wanted to learn more of their stories, so I had to keep going.

So far I’ve written and edited the first two stories in The Royals series.  The rest are briefly outlined, and the characters are solid in my head.  I’ve set up some of the situations for the latter stories in the first couple, but the majority of the work will need to be done during June.  I hope that I will be able to finish the third story, and write all of stories four and five. My goal is for each story to end up around 15,000 words long, so that I can edit down to around 12,000.  I will need to outline the sixth story, and start on turning my outline into a full fledged story.  I doubt that I will get to the seventh story in the series.  (But that’s what July is for!)

Find Missy:

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