Blog

Welcome to my website. I’ve left some of my very old blog posts here for continuity, but all the non-blog information on these pages is current and up-to-date. As I… Continue reading New Digs

I’m finally up-to-date with the 52 Ancestors prompts. Woohoo! I’ll celebrate this minor success while it lasts. 🙂 This week’s topic is longevity. I happen to a lot of longevity… Continue reading Longevity #52Ancestors

There are so many family photos I love, but for this exercise I picked this one, which I love so much I included it on my home page. It’s Christmas… Continue reading Favourite Photo #52Ancestors

With school and life, working on my own ancestry has taken a back seat. To stay connected with it through this busy year, I’ve decided to give Amy Johnson Crow’s… Continue reading The #52Ancestors Challenge

For all but four years of my life (my own first two and my daughter’s), this day, the Tuesday following Labour Day, has marked the beginning of a new school… Continue reading A New Year, A New Challenge

During my recent trip to Scotland, I got to spend 3 1/2 days researching at the Scotland’s People Centre/Register House. For those of us researching Scottish roots, this place is… Continue reading Scotland’s People Centre

Falkland is one of my favourite places in Fife. It’s a gorgeous little village, for one thing, and the people in it are lovely. Every single local Ive ever met… Continue reading Falkland

By this time of night, my body still reminds me that it started the wake-up process at 4am thanks to minor lingering jet lag, so this will just be a… Continue reading Hello from Scotland

So much going on in my life these days, not least of which is planning for this year’s Surrey International Writers’ Conference. 2017 marks the 25th annual SiWC. We’ve come… Continue reading #SiWC17

This Friday, I depart for a research trip in Scotland. Much of it will be family-history related, but not all, and I’m excited about the other parts, too. Two years… Continue reading Scotland Research Trip

A few weeks ago, I received the results of my Ancestry DNA test. The experience of using the test and sending it in was pretty straightforward. Prepare to spit a… Continue reading Ancestry DNA Experience

I’ll let you in on a secret: I haven’t written a word in two months. This is a highly unusual state of affairs for me. Even when the words aren’t… Continue reading On Writer’s Block

I was skimming through a bunch of blog posts recently, and came across one that said an unnamed “famous” writer had mastered his craft and no longer needed editorial help.… Continue reading Mastering Writing Craft?

This topic came up in a random conversation the other day, and I thought it was a fun one to put on the blog, mostly because I’d really love to… Continue reading Three Things on a Friday Afternoon

Today is one of those rare days when I’m taking an hour to catch up on reading all the cool links I’ve clicked through to and left sitting open on… Continue reading Catching up on Links

I write what are typically called “quiet books”, women’s fiction with character-driven stories about relationships and the choices we make and human emotions and all that good stuff. Not surprisingly,… Continue reading Women's Fiction: Your Favourite Quiet Reads

As anyone reading this likely already knows, I have just wrapped up a full year of work that culminated, as it always does, in the gathering of hundreds of writers… Continue reading SiWC 2015

A few people have been asking me to see photos of my trip to Scotland in May. I flew to Edinburgh, and from there worked my way up to Elgin,… Continue reading Scotland Photos

I’m not writing today. I’m tempted. I have a story that’s been talking to me for a couple of weeks now, asserting itself with scene ideas when I’m trying to… Continue reading Stopping to Listen

I don’t claim to be an expert on query letters, and I’m not a literary agent. But in my day job as a conference coordinator, I get a LOT of… Continue reading Query Tips From My Inbox

Hello, all! Probably easiest to let my husband speak for himself here, since he knows the details. His note is below. If you’re able to help with a few minutes… Continue reading Help My Husband Make a Movie

Happy new year! I took a couple of weeks off over the holidays. I started out the month by accepting Nephele Tempest’s December writing challenge, in which you try to… Continue reading Writing Inspiration

I’m deep into the last-minute preparations – baking, cleaning, wrapping presents – for our family’s Christmas celebrations. But today, I took a couple of hours off to have a hot… Continue reading Happy Holidays

This is going to be a long post, because it’s been a full week in the news already, and it’s only Thursday, and I’ve got a lot on my mind.… Continue reading Reflections on This Week

Around this time every year, after a couple of months of having every waking minute – and lots of sleeping ones – taken up with my work for the Surrey… Continue reading Day Job Gratitude

The changing room at my local pool is a busy place. Mums scrub toddlers dry with faded, worn towels, the sort we all hesitate to throw away because they come… Continue reading Bodies at the Pool

I don’t purport to be an expert on social media. But I do pay attention, and I think I’ve learned a few things along the way, one of the fringe… Continue reading Sunday afternoon Twitter talk

Awhile back, I had great intentions of writing a blog post about the weight of disorganization. The irony of the fact that I still haven’t posted it hasn’t escaped me.… Continue reading The Weight of Disorganization

A few random things for a Monday… I grew up with cops. My mum worked as a public servant for the RCMP for twenty-six years, so her co-worker friends included… Continue reading Of Officers and Blogs and Books that Make Me Cry

I’ve been sick this week, with the sort of chesty, sinus-y, feverish bug that knocks you flat and makes simply breathing enough of a challenge that working is out of… Continue reading Perspective and Inspiration

My current favourite playlist on my iPod is one I’ve labelled “mellow”. It’s a wide-ranging list in terms of styles and genres of music, but all the songs have in… Continue reading Ballads and Love Songs

Last week, a rare opportunity arose for me to get away by myself for a few days. It was perfect timing for a change of scene, so I grabbed it,… Continue reading Taking Time Out

I happen to be one of the lucky winners of the parent lottery. I’m not sure if I’ve ever talked here about my mum, but in case I haven’t, she’s… Continue reading Living Out Loud

How did it get to be Tuesday already? Here in BC, we’ve just come out of a much-needed, welcome long weekend, and I don’t really know how it disappeared so… Continue reading Weekend Wanders

Have you signed up for the Month of Letters yet? The delightful Mary Robinette Kowal’s annual letter writing challenge kicks off tomorrow. Check it out here: http://lettermo.com/ Today, I have a… Continue reading Letter Month Guest Post

Musing this Sunday morning about the fact that no matter how hard I try to pack it all in, there will never be enough hours to spend with the people… Continue reading Sunday Morning Musing

Happy new year! It’s taken me this long to settle in to my regular routine again after the holidays, and I’m not sure I’m there even yet. But I’m working… Continue reading New Year, New Schedule

Whatever you celebrate and however you spend the holidays, I wish you joy, hope, wonder, and great reading material now and every day. See you in the new year!

It’s nearly Christmas, and I’m feeling nostalgic for holidays past, and with that, am in the mood for touching stories. Thought I’d share a few things I’ve come across in… Continue reading A Few Feel-Good Things

The following rant won’t be groundbreaking. I share the opinion of most thinking people I know on this topic, and many of them are stirred up about this today. But… Continue reading Reading What You Like

For the last couple of weeks, I have been working flat out on a fresh edit of my current MS, triggered by editorial notes from my agent. I had hoped… Continue reading On Editing – Overused Words

Yesterday, I stopped for a hot chocolate and a few minutes of quiet work in between one meeting and another. By the time I sat down and opened my computer,… Continue reading Random Friday

Does anyone else ever wish they could put the need for sleep and food aside sometimes and stretch one day out for as long as it took to finish a… Continue reading Fleeting Hours

You know, I hesitated to write this post today, because it’s been five days since Barbara Park died, making it “old news” in internet terms, even if it is the… Continue reading On Barbara Park

A couple of years ago, I really wanted to finish the manuscript I was working on. I’d hit the part of the year when my day job threatens to take… Continue reading The Games We Play

Hello, and welcome to my new digs. You’ll notice a few changes from my old site, most notably that I’m now blogging under my pen name, Kathy Kenzie. For those… Continue reading Welcome to the new site!

For my birthday this year, I got this Moleskine book journal as a present. I’ve decided to use it to keep track of memorable reads, the ones that stay with… Continue reading What I've Been Reading

I’m very pleased (she said, understating the case terribly) to announce that I have signed with Nephele Tempest of The Knight Agency. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Nephele through… Continue reading Agent!

It’s been a heck of a summer here, filled with family and friends and travel and very, very little time online. Today, it’s absolutely pouring rain, a morning designed to… Continue reading Reading Romance

In my day job as coordinator of the Surrey International Writers’ Conference, I get a LOT of questions in my email inbox. While many of the queries are conference-related, an… Continue reading Agent Questions

My baby girl became a teenager last week. I am ever more aware of the truth of something author Linda Grimes said to me once: mothers have long days and… Continue reading Milestones

Apparently today is the blue-est day of the year, in terms of people’s moods, at least here where it was a story on the news tonight. I’m not sure how… Continue reading Blue Monday

Happy new year! The fact that I’m saying so on the 14th of January should give you some idea how busy the first two weeks of 2013 have turned out to… Continue reading Rod Stewart on Writing

With eleven days to go in 2012, it’s entirely likely this list may change or at least grow before the end of the year. But I got thinking today about… Continue reading A Few Good Reads

The grey, drippy skies of a West Coast December invite reflection. It’s a time for philosophical discussions over warm beverages and taking personal inventory. At the moment, I’m also mulling… Continue reading Who are we?

We remember. Both the men pictured here lived long after the war. But they served. We remember them, and all the others who have given their youth, their peace of… Continue reading Remembrance

I’ve gathered up some of the links to blogs written by this year’s SiWC attendees about the conference and have posted them on the blog at the SiWC website today.… Continue reading Blogging at SiWC.ca today

My good friend Tyner Gillies mentioned me in his blog post this afternoon. It didn’t occur to me until he posted it that agreeing to be mentioned meant he’d point… Continue reading Interrupting the crickets…

This is the busiest time of my conference year other than the conference itself, so I’m afraid my ability to string sentences together is rather impaired at this point. But… Continue reading Blog Visiting

It’s my birthday. Back-to-school and my birthday always fall within a week or so of each other, so inevitably it’s reflection time, goal-setting time, a chance to figure out where… Continue reading Birthday Reflections

We all have them: those souls who, going about their daily lives, doing the best they can, change ours. Some of you who know me well have heard about this… Continue reading People Who Make a Difference

It’s the first day of school here in BC, and my girl is off to her first hour as a grade seven, king of the heap here, where grade 7… Continue reading First Day of School Blues

My next door neighbours are a couple in their eighties. They’re the best possible sort of neighbours to have in lots of ways. They’re quiet, friendly, warm, and exactly the… Continue reading Chacun son goût

I don’t know about you, but iTunes has certainly changed the way I listen to music at home. In the car, I’m usually a radio girl, so things are much… Continue reading Albums You Haven't Heard Lately

Read anything good lately? I’ve been making a bit of a dent in my TBR pile. That’s not to say I haven’t added more to the pile as quickly as… Continue reading Memorable Reads

I know people who always have several different books on the go, sometimes one for work, one for the car, one for home… I am not one of those people.… Continue reading Reading Idiosyncrasies

There are so many things that came to mind when I wrote the title for this blog post. I think we spend so much of our lives en route from… Continue reading On Being In Between

It’s a sleepy kind of day here, absolutely pouring rain, cold and grey, more like March than June, even here in the urban rainforest where I live. I’m feeling unproductive, so in… Continue reading A Mostly Random Collection of Links

I don’t have a dedicated office. I have instead a variety of spaces in my house where I can work: a desk in the middle of my kitchen, a guest… Continue reading In Praise of the $5 Office

I recently read a historical romance by a multi-book NYT bestselling author. I won’t name her here, but I’ve read her stuff before and have liked it well enough. This… Continue reading Things that make you throw a book across the room

The lovely Ev Bishop, a writer friend of mine, tagged me in this meme. Since I’ve been woefully neglectful of my blog, her tag seemed like as good a kick… Continue reading Lucky 7 Meme for Ev

Once upon a time when the world was young and the internet only a gleam in some computer geek’s (or was that Al Gore’s?) eye, writing under a pen name… Continue reading The Great Pen Name Debate

I don’t expect my husband to do anything for me for Valentine’s Day. And not in that “I say I don’t expect it but really I’m lying” way of which… Continue reading Valentine's Day Links

The delightful Mary Robinette Kowal has thrown down the gauntlet, challenging all of us with our tech-heavy lives to slow down for a minute and send real mail, one piece… Continue reading The Month of Letters Challenge

So many areas of my life right now are all about waiting. It’s an occupational reality in both my jobs and happens to be the case in my personal life… Continue reading Working and Waiting

When I’m working – which I am a LOT these days – a few minutes wandering around the internet lets my subconscious work out problems – be they fictional or… Continue reading Links

I started writing my own New Year’s post today – happy new year, by the way – but got interrupted by life. It’ll get done, but until then, if you’re… Continue reading 25 Things… a most excellent post by Chuck Wendig

I’m not much of a Thanksgiving girl. It’s a good excuse for a turkey dinner, but it’s not a tradition I grew up with. I don’t think my Thanksgiving gap… Continue reading Small pleasures

I haven’t talked too much here – or anywhere – about my recent serious effort to find an agent. It’s no secret, but it’s a business thing, and I figure… Continue reading Agents and Underwear

I’m between books at the moment, and haven’t yet figured out what the next one is going to be about. Not that I’m lacking for ideas. Like most writers, I’m… Continue reading On Language

Being a writer changes you as a reader. It’s not as easy as it once was to suspend disbelief and let a story take you away when you’re aware of… Continue reading The Winter Sea

It’s a cold, wet, dreary, gray day here on the Wet Coast. (And no, for those of you Elsewhere, that’s not a typo, but an apt description.) It’s been just… Continue reading The Writing Sweater

Thank you.

Okay, I’ll admit it. Halloween is not my favourite holiday. There are parts of it I like, of course, and look forward to. I’m a fan of traditions, and Halloween… Continue reading Happy Halloween!

My friend Leslie was a cool chick. She loved her kids, her boyfriend, Star Wars, her friends, and standing up for what she believed was right, probably in about that… Continue reading The Right Goodbye

While I was sitting at Sunday lunch at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference on Sunday, my elementary school celebrated fifty years of existence with a reunion of all the staff… Continue reading Conflicts of one kind and another…

It’s been more than a little while since I was last here. For those of you who keep track of such things, sorry about that. My list of excuses is… Continue reading What I did on my summer va… no, wait.

Busy weekend here, and Father’s Day is almost over. Had a good day with my husband and our daughter beginning with breakfast in bed for him and finishing tonight, just… Continue reading Father's Day

It’s game day in Vancouver. For the first time in the history of the Vancouver Canucks, game 7 of the Stanley Cup final is here, in our building, in our… Continue reading We Are All Canucks

I’m on a punishing writing schedule this month. I’ll tell you about that sometime, but not today. Today, and yesterday too, to tell you the truth, the well is dry.… Continue reading In Search of Beauty

I never met Derek Miller. I spotted the odd tweet by people I follow mentioning his name, especially over the last couple of weeks, but I didn’t know him, never… Continue reading Derek K. Miller

It’s spring here in the Lower Mainland. True, we technically have a few days to go according to the calendar, but the blossoms are blooming, the allergies are making us… Continue reading Life Acks

My name is Kathy, and I read romance. I read other stuff, too, but for the purposes of this post, I’m going to focus on the love story part of… Continue reading Choosing Happy

Huge congratulations to Martin Chung, the excellent photographer who happens to be my husband, on his accolade of excellence from the WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) 16×20 print contest.… Continue reading Accolade of Excellence

I’ve mentioned my friend Ev Bishop’s blog here before. But once again today (well, yesterday, actually, but I’m behind on my reading – big surprise), she’s written a post that… Continue reading Beautiful details and chance encounters

I am lucky to count some pretty awesome writing women among my friends, and it just so happens that three of them have news to share. Vicki Pettersson, urban fantasy… Continue reading Link love

Ever felt strongly enough about something to write a letter to the people involved? We all have our causes, sure. But every once in awhile, I’m reminded of just how… Continue reading A cause for everyone…

It’s a dark, rainy Sunday afternoon here in the Lower Mainland of BC. There’s a separation of clouds and ground today, but only just. I’m pretty sure I could reach… Continue reading Housework philosophizing

It’s January 27, technically the depths of winter here in the northern hemisphere. But as all Vancouverites know, unless we’re hit with something unseasonable, we’re almost ready to head into… Continue reading Disbelieving Camera

The last few weeks, I’ve been away from all forms of social media. I haven’t blogged, been on Twitter or even checked Facebook. Truth is, I’ve hardly even been on… Continue reading A New Year