KATHRYN R. BIEL: AUTHOR

I've been hard at work (which is why the blog has been suffering) on getting my fourth novel ready to go. Jump, Jive, and Wail  is going to the editor this week, which means I can finally tell the world about it. I was first inspired to write this story almost a year ago, while watching the Winter Olympics. I love watching the ski jumpers and thought that somehow, it would be cool to write a story about it. I happened to mention it to the lovely and talented Aven Ellis , and she encouraged me to go for it. I had to do a lot of research for this book, which is something that I usually don't have the patience for. Since I knew nothing about ski jumping, I had to really look into it. One of the things I found out was that women were not allowed to compete in ski jumping before the Sochi Olympics in 2014. Women from several countries worked together and lobbied (and sued) to get Women's Ski Jumping allowed in. Staff from Women's Ski Jumping USA ( http://www.wsjusa.com/ ...

Forgive me if you've heard this story before. I need to tell it again. When I was in high school, I had a little bit of a hard time deciding what I wanted to be when I grew up. For a few minutes, I considered majoring in Communications. But I knew I wanted to be in the medical field. But the commitment to schooling and student loans that went along with medical school intimidated me. I was considering physical therapy and respiratory therapy. Somewhere along this time, my next door neighbor was in a terrible car accident. He was thrown through the window of his truck and broke his neck. He was paralyzed. This was a hard thing to accept. He had been in my brother's class and I remember waiting at the bus stop with him. As one can imagine, becoming paralyzed in your early 20's can be devastating. It certainly was for this young man. His step-mother, a nurse, used to give me my allergy shots, so we'd talk about things every week when I was over there. I knew that he ...