It’s Pub Day!

I’m writing this from the same place I started my historical fiction novel The Rhino Keeper: my home in Wichita, Kansas, on an old rod iron bed in our spare bedroom.

Just like that day in 2021, the sun has set, and even in the graying light, I can see that the colors of fall have tinged the trees. The windows are open. I have a cat by my side.

Though many things are the same, many things have changed, too.

There is a fence in this bedroom that wasn’t here in 2021, when I wrote the first few lines of The Rhino Keeper. That fence is covered in painted flowers that I call rejection flowers.

Over 60 rejections for the manuscript that becomes a published book tomorrow. Each one of them beautiful in their own way, as they became a little garden that led me to a fabulous publisher and the future I have dreamed of as a historical fiction author.

Funny enough, those first lines of The Rhino Keeper weren’t the beginning of the book.

I wrote the first paragraph of the climax before anything else. It propelled me onward, to make sure my characters and the real history I discovered about Clara the rhino.

Here it is:

Douwemout van der Meer stumbled up the embankment, fire in his lungs. He was too late — Clara’s screams told him so. How badly was she hurt? He ran. The last time he coaxed his sea-strong legs to move like was across the deck of his broad ship to join the crew in stripping down the rear sails of the Knappenhof during the storm at a sea. This storm was a different kind. It felt like the devil was there, hands clasped around his lungs — shortening his breath and stride. But the screaming did not stop, and neither did he. Clara was in danger, but she was still alive.

My imagination has taken me to the deck of a ship, the streets of 1740s Europe, the rivers of India, and the farthest tip of Africa. All from this small bedroom in Wichita, Kansas.

And now, on October 22, 2024, your imaginations can take you there, too.

Welcome to the world, The Rhino Keeper. I’m so glad you’re here.