Meet Kate

This will surprise no one but myself.

Kate Baxter has been brewing in the back of my mind for a very long time. I’ve been a published author, editor, educator, and public speaker for decades now. I publish and edit  in many different genres for wildly different audiences.

Consequently, I’m known by several pen names because the publishing powers that be claim that audiences who like horror stories or romance or critical essays only want those kinds of things from authors they love. Readers get annoyed when the latest Jane Doe book isn’t their favorite flavor of story.

I call it the McDonald’s theory of literature. Apparently a lot of readers find comfort in knowing exactly what their Big Mac is going to taste like.

But as a creative, I never wanted to spend my career flipping burgers. There are so many other kinds of food to explore.

While we don’t like to say it out loud, words and stories are a business. Like any business, there are models and best practices that help build audiences, connect with readers and reviewers through social media, and increase sales. As an author, you sell yourself as much as your fiction.

Y’all, it’s a lot to manage, especially if you’re publishing under multiple pen names.

Over the years I’ve added to and subtracted from my list of pen names—adding when I was coloring outside the lines and subtracting when it became too many personas to manage.

Unfortunately, the publishing powers that be were right. Readers really want authors to stay in particular lanes. It’s rare to find an audience that wants your voice—your subtext, humor, worldview—regardless of genre or subject matter.

Stories are a business, remember?

So for the last ten years or so I’ve concentrated on using one main pen name and swerving my little car as wide as it could possibly go without giving my audience whiplash. I’ve been successful enough that many in the writing world don’t know my main pen name isn’t my legal name.

Marketing for the win!

But that also left me stranded in Burgerville. There were so many things I wanted to say that just didn’t work with my brand.

Ugh. Just the idea of brand makes my stomach ache.

A while ago, I was walking through the highlands of Scotland, thinking about writing and how I really wasn’t. I had deadlines that loomed and zero enthusiasm. I didn’t know why. The novels I was working on were good, but to the frustration of editors and publishers, I just couldn’t sit my butt down and write.

Surrounded by heather and sheep, I asked myself, “If you could write anything right now, what would that be?”

And the immediate answer was waaaaaay off brand.

I blinked hard and started working through the publishing puzzle.

I knew there was no market, no way to pay bills writing this stuff. It’s too niche. I’d have to do a big social media campaign to start to gather an audience.

Ugh. Just no.

Move on. Write what pays, stupid.

I can’t, I realize. My throat is so full with the things I couldn’t say that it blocked all the other words, the bill paying words, from coming out.

Damn it.

Sigh.

Then: so what if stories and words were not a business?

What if I just wrote and found outlets for all these weird little pieces on other LDS media sites? What if I low key put things that probably wouldn’t appeal to the other sites (or more accurately, when I wrote more than anyone would want to publish) just here, on a landing page and blog? No deadlines. Just write when inspiration or frustration strikes.

So not a business. No marketing. No direct audience building. But then it also can’t be a current pen name or promoted from a known pen name. I’m starting from scratch.

My legal name? Oh, hell no.

If I’m really going to write these bottled words—the uncensored intersections of family and faith and patriarchy and culture and feminism and politics and hope and despair and how hard it is to become Christlike in a mortal world—and publish it out loud, I’ll need to protect the innocent who don’t deserve the scrutiny. I have to be able to write honestly without everyone assuming the daughter or son or husband or mother or mother-in-law in an essay or story is the one tied to me.

Even though they definitely inspired or sparked it. Creative license isn’t something widely understood by audiences. Nobody needs to know how the sausage was made.

And so Kate Baxter was born.

Both Kate and Baxter are family names. They honor both my Utah-territory-founding-and-pre-Nauvoo ancestors who married other over-the-plains-and-seas Mormon pioneer stock, as well as those ancestors who continued westward and mingled with other emigrants, wayfinders, and seekers.

So meet Kate Baxter.

It’s going to be a wild, slightly spicy ride. Think of it as green jello-jalapeno.

Promise.