A Chat with Kim Golden

As part of the mini blog tour for her terrific books Maybe Baby and Maybe Tonight, I had the great pleasure of chatting with the author Kim Golden, about writing, about the Maybe series, and about her characters Laney and Mads.

LJ: When and why did you decide that you wanted to be a fiction writer?

Kim: I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I’ve always loved reading and writing—even when I kept telling myself I wanted to be an architect, I always wrote for pleasure. After a while, I realized that I didn’t really want to be an architect. What really made me happy was writing. I think I figured it out while I was in high school. And in college I focused on my writing, much to the chagrin of my parents. 🙂

LJ: What do you do for fun when you’re not writing?

Kim: When I’m not writing, I spend a lot of time reading, traveling, walking and hanging out with my husband. We both love traveling, so we’re always looking for new places to experience.

LJ: When you started out writing Maybe Baby, had you planned for it to be a series?

Kim: I never planned for Maybe Baby to become a series. I initially only planned the one book told from alternating points of view. I realized early on though that Maybe Baby needed to be Laney’s story, so I set aside the chapters I’d written from Mads’s POV.

The characters wouldn’t stop speaking and sharing their secrets with me, so I decided to release Maybe Tonight (Mads’s POV) as a serial novella. A lot of readers didn’t understand that it was a serial novella and thought it would only be those first five chapters. But every few weeks I expanded it with more chapters and the final result was 100 pages of Mads’s story taking us to when he and Laney finally start their family together.

I thought that would be the end of it, but then Eddy began to tell her story, which will be Maybe Tomorrow. And then later Laney and Mads made it clear there was more to their story, which will be Maybe Forever.

LJ: If Laney and Mads were conducting this interview, what would they want to talk to their creator about?

Kim: Mads would probably want to me to tell you more about what his life was like before he met Laney, and then he’d want me to give you even more insight into their lives. Laney would probably want me to show you what it was like during those first few years with Niklas so readers would get an even clearer picture of her life with him and why she felt so restless. Or maybe she’d want me to simply let you see the wedding—when she and Mads finally get married.

LJ: Is there a recurring theme in your work? If so, what is it?

Kim: I find that I often write about people who’ve lost loved ones. Laney lost her mother to breast cancer, and her father chose his new wife over his daughter; Mads lost his mother to injuries sustained in a traffic accident, and his father chose alcohol over him. Then there’s the infidelity theme that has popped up in some of my work. I know it’s a bone of contention for some readers, but I am intrigued by this theme and it will probably pop up again.

LJ: What’s next on the horizon for you writing wise?

Kim: I am still trying to decide which project to finish. The sequels to Maybe Baby are next up. Then I am working on another serial novella, which I will be publishing on Wattpad until it’s done. I’ve been pondering finishing two paranormal stories I started a while ago and set aside. Then I’ve got ideas for novellas set in Hunters Grove, the fictional Vermont town that was the setting for Snowbound. Well, I am sure I will figure it all out sooner or later. 🙂

ABOUT THE BOOKS:

Imagine finding out you could never have a baby with the man you love…

Expat American Laney Halliwell finds out the hard way when Niklas tells her he had a vasectomy before they met and isn’t interested in reversing it. Why should he? They’ve got his kids from his first marriage and an enviable life in Stockholm.

What if you fell in love in the most unexpected way…?

But Laney wants more. So when a friend suggests she look into an alternative sperm bank in Copenhagen to find a potential father for her baby, things don’t go exactly as planned. Especially when Laney meets Mads and finds herself falling in love.

Available at Amazon here

Mads Rasmussen has had enough: of being a sperm donor, of feeling disconnected, of being alone. Then someone walks into his life in a most unexpected way…

Maybe Tonight gives a glimpse of Mads’s life just before and just after he meets Laney in Maybe Baby.

Maybe Tonight is a novella.

Available at Amazon here

An Excerpt from Maybe Baby

He pulled a crushed packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his jeans and offered me one. I accepted it and leaned in so he could light it for me. As I took that first illicit drag, he said, “I think I saw you earlier. I was in a café and I looked out the window and saw someone who looked a lot like you.”

“I saw you, too,” I admitted. We both exhaled smoke and watched the milky tendrils merge and swirl. We kept our backs to the bar and looked out over the water again. “And when I saw you in their… books, I was a little stunned.”

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here, either.”

His voice trailed down my spine. I stole a glance at him. I was wrong earlier when I said he wasn’t handsome. There was something so masculine about him. I couldn’t really find the words to describe him. He was tall and lean, but there was a strength to him. Underneath his clothing was sure to be the body of someone who did not go to the gym, but who had the natural muscles and leanness of physical labor. He didn’t have the perfectly slicked-back hair that most Scandinavian men seemed to favor; they wore it like a badge of their social class and their success. Mads’s hair was a messy mop of waves and stray curls that looked coppery in the glow of the spotlights. He swept back the curls that hung in front of his eyes and revealed the most beautiful pair of hazel eyes. I bit my lower lip. He was too good-looking for me, and he was smiling at me with such fierceness that I knew he felt something, too. He was watching me. I could feel the path his eyes took. My body tingled in anticipation.

“I saw you standing there and I thought, shit, this must be some kind of dream. Or maybe Ida was playing a joke on me.”

We both laughed. What were the chances?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kim Golden was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1995, she left the US and moved to Sweden for love with a capital L. When she isn’t writing fiction, she writes copy about perfume for a Swedish cosmetics fir.

She writes stories for people who know that love comes in every color.