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Buckle up because life is a great ride. Today’s featured author is American Sign Language Interpreter, half-marathon runner, chocolate lover, and mom of 4, Kelly Brakenhoff. Kelly and I talk about how she got into writing both mystery novels and children’s books, where she finds the inspiration to write her books and more!!! *For An Entire Special Edition transcript of this episode, scroll below. Key Things You’ll Learn: Why she writes mystery novels and why they’re her favorite book genre. Why she started her own publishing company. What inspired her children’s book series. The most important thing you must get right about when you publish a children’s book. Kelly’s Site: http://kellybrakenhoff.com/ Kelly’s Books: https://www.amazon.com/Kelly-Brakenhoff/e/B07PN7K7T7%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share The opening track is titled "Good Morning World" by EV Sharp (Formerly Known As MagicMusic Productions). Listen and download the full track by clicking on the following link. https://evsharp.bandcamp.com/track/good-morning-world Resources Mentioned: NaNoWriMo: https://www.nanowrimo.org/ Related Episodes: 33 - "Inspiration, Sci-Fi, & Video Games" with Beth Martin (@bethmart07): http://goingnorth.libsyn.com/33-inspiration-sc-fi-video-games-with-beth-martin-bethmart07 92 - "Roya Sands and the Bridge Between Worlds" with Saryon Michael White: http://goingnorth.libsyn.com/92-roya-sands-and-the-bridge-between-worlds-with-saryon-michael-white 120.5 (Local Author Bonus Special) [LABS] - "The Children of Time" with Victory Parsons (@ReadLiftRepeat): http://goingnorth.libsyn.com/1205-local-author-bonus-special-labs-the-children-of-time-with-victory-parsons-readliftrepeat 150 - "Princess Monroe and Her Happily Ever After" with Jody Vallee Smith: http://goingnorth.libsyn.com/150-princess-monroe-and-her-happily-ever-after-with-jody-vallee-smith 241 – “Highwayman” with MJ Preston (@MJPreston1): http://goingnorth.libsyn.com/241-highwayman-with-mj-preston-mjpreston1 243 – “Fantasy Writing & The Power of Audiobooks For Indie Authors” with Riley Tune (@rileytuneauthor): http://goingnorth.libsyn.com/243-fantasy-writing-the-power-of-audiobooks-for-indie-authors-with-riley-tune-rileytuneauthor Episode Transcript (Courtesy of Kelly) :) : Dom Brightmon: You are now tuning in to the going North podcast. With your host, bestselling author, professional speaker, and member of the John Maxwell team, Dominique “Dom” Brightman, and every Monday and Thursday we're going to hear the voice of a different author, sharing their gifts, stories, and expertise to help your charge forward in life. Now, let's get on with the show. And today on the Going North podcast, we're bringing some fabulous humans from across the globe. Today is no different. Today is no different because we got another fabulous author from the Creative Edge Crew, baby. That's right. These are some creative folks who have an edge and not Adam Copeland because this fabulous author right here is not only a fabulous mom, but she's also an American Sign Language Interpreter, which is actually a first for this podcast. You we’ve never had an ASL professional well on his podcast, and her motivation for learning ASL actually began back in high school when she wanted to converse with her Deaf friends and she also, and published her first novel a murder mystery, which is Death by Dissertation, which was published back in April, 2019 as well as Dead Week. In addition to that, a children's picture books series featuring Duke, the Deaf Dog as well. This is a lady of many talents in addition to all that fabulous stuff. She also serves on the Board of Editors for the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf publication, VIEWS. Let's give it up for the fabulous KB, not KB Toys herself. Ms. Kelly Brakenhoff, how are you today, ma'am? Kelly Brakenhoff: Hi, I'm great. How are you doing? Dom Brightmon: Doing fabulous, doing fabulous, indeed. We got the fabulous Kind Kelly on the show. I'm talking about. Kelly Brakenhoff: You remind me when I was younger, and people would try to make fun of my name. You know, they do the rhyming thing. The worst thing they could come up with was smelly Kelly with a belly full of jelly. I was really hurt though. Dom Brightmon: Or did you even have a belly, at least a huge one? Kelly Brakenhoff: Well, no. I suppose is that if that was the worst they could come up with, that was okay. Dom Brightmon: Oh yeah, we can always call you a tree. Well that that could be worse. Why did I do that to myself? Never mind, that's bad, but don't worry. It's about the sensational Kelly. Would you mind filling in some cavities or filling an introduction and tell us a bit about who is the one and only Kelly B. herself. Kelly Brakenhoff: I was looking over your website and everything. You really have had a lot of inspirational people on before me, and all of the things that you've gotten to do. I was trying to think of what I could contribute to that body of work there. I was intimidated thinking that I'm just a mom and I wrote some books. But I guess one thing that's interesting is that it took me a really long time to write the books. I am quite a bit older, and I've had this career as an American Sign Language interpreter for a very long time. And like you said, I have four kids. I took a lot of time raising and teaching them how to use the washing machine and the dishwasher while they were growing up, until they could fend for themselves and move out. Once they got older, I got serious. I'd always wanted to be a writer my whole life, and once they started getting old enough, I really buckled down and decided that I wanted to do this badly enough. I was going to do whatever it took. I think it was 2014 when I did my first NaNoWriMo. Dom, have you experienced a NaNoWriMo yourself before? Dom Brightmon: Oh yeah, I wrote maybe five words. Kelly Brakenhoff: See, I'm the person where I love that challenge. I'm competitive, like our family. We have these, you know, game nights. Everybody in our family is really competitive. If you set a competition before me, that's the best way to get me to do something. When I read about National Novel Writing Month, I thought, okay, I can write every day for 30 days and I can come up with 50,000 words. I think I can do this. One year I decided to go for it. Well, I ended up with 50,000 words, and then it took me another four years to edit and revise them to make it into my first book, Death by Dissertation. Dom Brightmon: Well, hey, that's frigging awesome. Well, I mean, that's a feat within itself to be able to actually write enough words during that month before it ends, or as it ends, and then it's actually published. It actually takes guts because some folks in the past on this show, they've done NaNoWriMo they've had plenty of books, but they never actually published them for the public to read. That takes guts on your follow through, and it looks like we found a new nickname for you, Competitive Kelly. Kelly Brakenhoff: Yeah, that's right. I mean, definitely it's a great accomplishment to complete NaNoWriMo. Some people do it for their own personal satisfaction, to challenge themselves, but I wanted more. I've always wanted to be an author and I never really saw the path to do that in my life with time and everything. But once I broke it down into the small chunks of like, okay, well I can write 50,000 words and then I can start working on getting them revised. It took me a couple years to get through that whole process and I submitted it around to a bunch of agents and publishing houses. I had a lot of people who asked me to send in my whole manuscript. And I did that for over a year and worked really hard at that. And then, I never could get anybody that was interested in offering me a contract. And I went through this time where I had to decide, do I start something else or do I keep working on this one? And I really believed in this story because of the main character, her name is Cassandra Sato and she moves from Hawai’i to Nebraska for her dream job. Who does that, right? But she always wanted to be a college administrator. She works in a small college in Hawai’i, and she wants to become a president of a university someday. She gets offered the job at this college in Nebraska, but after a couple months they find a student dead on the campus. She has to go and help figure out what happened to the student. Some of the characters in the book are Deaf and use American Sign Language. In the process of writing the book, I realized that one of the things that I wanted to do with this was make people aware of what it's like. You know, with my day job, I work with Deaf people all the time, and I know lots of really cool Deaf people that have really cool jobs and do great things. But your average person doesn't run into very many deaf people. And you might not know very much sign language except for the alphabet and a couple of curse words, and that's it. I thought it'd be really cool to have characters in the book that are Deaf and use sign language. The more I've gotten into it, and the more I've written in the series and everything, I've realized that’s my thing. I wanted to make the world more aware of what it's like to be Deaf or to know sign language. A lot of the feedback that I've gotten from reviewers and readers have said that they really appreciated learning about Deaf Culture. The first book is a lot about what it's like to be a college student who's Deaf. If you imagine that you're in your class and the professor is talking, but you're getting all the information through the interpreter and what that's like and how hard and challenging that is. You know, a lot of people don't think about things like that. And the readers have really enjoyed getting a taste of what it's like through the books. That cemented in my head why I'm doing this. Dom Brightmon: Ah, yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. And I'm guessing your day to day work with Deaf folks, is that really the main inspiration beyond the novel, the mystery novel. Kelly Brakenhoff: Yeah, definitely. In my day job, most of what I do is on call. Well, not now, but usually what I'm doing is on college campuses. I actually attend the classes with Deaf students and interpret what the teacher and the other students say in class, and then interpret what the student says to the rest of the class so that everybody knows what each other's saying. I've been doing this for over 20 years, and I've done 17 different college majors all the way from freshmen English to PhD candidates. A really, really wide variety of things. I've seen really good professors. I've seen really bad professors. I've had interesting classes and some classes that are make me squeamish or things like that. It's been a really interesting thing. I noticed college campuses have academic politics. I've worked with faculty members too and sat in on staff meetings and everything. You know, some of that stuff, like how they always say like life is stranger than fiction. I always thought this is a great place to have murder. You’ve got mayhem. You’ve got politics, you got all kinds of good stuff here. Some of the quotes in the book, I didn't even make it up. It was things I’ve overheard. Dom Brightmon: Not just killing walls but killing humans. Kelly Brakenhoff: There's quite a few series that are based in college campuses. I'm not the only one who thinks that it’s a ripe setting. Dom Brightmon: Oh yeah. Cause definitely a lot of folks in the spring, some professors fighting for tenure, right? Of course, administration, the politics and hell, that's everywhere. Shoot, whenever there's more than one person, there's going to be something happening. Kelly Brakenhoff: Well, there's something about college campuses. You know how it's almost like a little town within a town. There's all kinds of plot opportunities there. Dom Brightmon: That's right. It's like a little town. It's like an exhibit Pimp My Ride. It's like, yeah, yeah, man. We put a town inside of your town. It's really called Murder Town. It’s a mystery novel where somebody got killed. Yup.. Kelly Brakenhoff: Sorry. I have this visual of a car with a town inside the back. Whatever. Totally taking me off on a tangent now. I'm sorry. I'll come back. Dom Brightmon: Oh no, we're going to go down a rabbit hole, bunny ears and all . . . about that time we had the mushrooms. Let me start. I’m just messing with you don’t’ worry. But it's all good though. It's all good. Out of all of the types and genres out there of novels and fiction, why mystery? Kelly Brakenhoff: Oh, that's easy. I love mysteries. That's been my favorite genre since I was little. You know, Nancy drew, except I thought Hardy boys were more interesting cause they got to do more cool stuff. They get to dig and camp and all this stuff. And, and as I grew up, I read more mysteries. I love to read thrillers too, but I don't know. Those are the things that I love to read myself so that's what I write. Dom Brightmon: Sweet. Yes, indeed. It's kinda funny. It's like whatever we expose ourselves to the most is what we eventually become. It's like you expose yourself to mystery books and then you love them so much that you eventually get to join a business of immortality and write a few of your own. Kelly Brakenhoff: Definitely. One of the good things that's kept me going here in my extended, self-quarantine, our cable TV company added all the Hallmark Channels to our package. We didn't get them, but now we have the Hallmark Mysteries and Movies channel. I've watched this whole channel, all of these different mystery movies and shows. It's been really nice for me to sit down at night. I feel like I can call it research and then it doesn't seem like I'm wasting time, but it's been really fun. Maybe someday I'll try to sell them my mysteries. Dom Brightmon: Heck yeah. Probably got two books cooking right now as we speak. Kelly Brakenhoff: That'd be great. Dom Brightmon: Yes, indeed. Tony, the tiger approved too. That's right. The sponsors didn't pay me, and they are not going to be feeling great. That was Roy. Tony the tiger. I'm about to show him who the real Tiger King is. Let me see. Kelly Brakenhoff: Do you watch that Tiger King show? Dom Brightmon: I've seen photos. I had no idea what the heck it was until maybe yesterday. I'm like, what? In the blue Hill? Kelly Brakenhoff: Yeah, I kept seeing people talk about it, but I didn't know what they were talking about. Then I saw someone listed all of the things in it, and then I was like, okay. I think I'm okay with not knowing about it. I’m good with that. I think I don't really need to know everything. Dom Brightmon: One of the few times or ignorance truly is bliss. Kelly Brakenhoff: Yeah. There are a few times, and this might be one.. Dom Brightmon: Yeah. But the beautiful thing is that you are versatile and yeah, agile in the literary sense. Cause you also have a children's book as well. Kelly Brakenhoff: Yes, that's right. I do. The children's book I've written is for preschool to second grade age. The kind where your parents still have to read to you or your grandparents or babysitter or somebody has to read you the book out loud and, it's called, Never Mind. it's about Duke, the Deaf Dog. Again, using my professional experience. I’ve been around a lot of really cool deaf people for a long time, and…
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