Good
afternoon Friends.
K.J. Klimasz
lives with his wife and their three kids in the same small town both he and his
wife grew up in about thirty miles away from St. Paul, Minnesota.
Family
vacations are important to K.J. and his wife, and they try to take family
vacations twice a year but usually settle for one.
My new release is called Murders, Bikers, and a Meteor. The book is a collection of short stories that I’ve written over the past couple of years. The stories range in genre from crime drama to science fiction, with story settings in the 1950s, ’60s, ’90s, and today. The stories are dark in nature, and it seems that my best work tends to run a little on the dark side.
I started writing fiction in high school, but back in the ’80s personal computers were not very common and to be honest my typing was horrific. I walked away from writing altogether thinking that writing wasn’t my niche. I didn’t get my first computer until the late ’90s. By then I figured my imagination had went unused for so long that it was gone, a use it or lose it kind of thing. A few years after that I met a gal, fell in love, and we got married. Shortly after we were married my new mother-in-law passed away, and my wife took her loss really hard. My wife began having panic attacks at night. I would ask her if there was anything I could do for her, and she replied, “Just talk to me.” I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I closed my eyes and just started randomly making up stories for her, and she would eventually fall asleep with me telling her stories. After a while I had gotten the bug to write again, and I had came up with quite a few good ideas for novels, but I knew that I wasn’t ready to tackle a project of that size, so I started writing short stories. Stories that I’m happy to say don’t put my wife to sleep. Over this last summer I decided to go through all of my short stories and publish a collection of my best ones.
Can you tell us the story behind your book cover?
My book cover and book title are tied together with one
another. After I submitted my manuscript, I still didn’t have a title for my
book and the publisher told me I needed to have a cover designed. The publisher
then gave me the name of a graphics design company that they refer their
authors to. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted for a cover, and I was having
trouble picturing what it should look like. If I can’t picture it, how am I
supposed to describe to somebody what it is I want?I went for a walk, hoping I would come up with some rough idea for a cover design and then I remembered that I had an old friend from high school that used to work in video game graphics, so I gave him a call. He asked me what I thought of the old pulp fiction book cover designs from the ’50s and ’60s. I looked up pulp fiction book cover designs on the internet; saw some examples and I liked the idea. After seeing the old book covers and titles it didn’t take me long to come up with my own book title. I sent my title and some excerpts from my book over to my friend, and a day later he sent me my cover design and asked me if I would like to make any changes with it. I told him it’s perfect, don’t change anything.
In addition to this blog tour, I also have an author’s website at www.kjklimasz.com, and my wife would like to create an author’s facebook page for me.
I get almost all of my story ideas, characters, and even dialogue pushing my lawnmower around my yard. Every story in my new release started with an old Honda lawn mower with a squeaky wheel making laps back and forth across my yard.
Every writer dreams about being able to earn a living and support themselves off of crafting their stories. I once heard someone say, “If you’re going to dream, dream in Technicolor.” and if my Technicolor dream was to come true, I’d be able to say, “I earn a living mowing my own lawn.”
I am currently working on my first novel. The book is a mystery that starts out with two boys finding a body floating in a river. Once the victim’s identity is revealed the list of suspects grows with each new twist.
I think organization
is the key to successfully writing a mystery, so I’ve spent a lot of extra time
laying this story out, working in subtle foreshadowing and plot twists. I’m
hoping to have the book completed next summer.
Tell us what you’re reading at the moment and what you think of it.
I’m currently reading Duma Key by Stephen King. I admire writers who can write in the first person. I say this because I’ve done a little first-person writing. At first I thought, “Oh, writing in the first person would be easy. I only need one point of view for my story.” What I didn’t realize is that as a writer you have to go into character when you write, and you have to use your character’s speech pattern to tell your story. You need to give the reader the impression that your character is sitting right beside them next to a dying campfire, and your character is stirring the glowing embers with a stick and telling the reader his or her story in their own words. Stephen King has done this very well with his character Edgar Freemantle. Like all of King’s books he has great character development and an imaginative storyline. If you like Stephen King’s work, you’ll probably like Duma Key.
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