Dispatch #2: The One Where I Finally Get to Say It Out Loud
If you’ve been following along, you know I’ve been sitting on something big. After months of waiting, rewriting, hoping, doubting, praying, and refreshing my inbox like it owed me money, I finally get to say the words I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to write:
I’ve partnered with Koehler Books to publish my debut novel, NO REST FOR THE WICKED, coming August 2026.
This book is the first in a series of paranormal thrillers featuring my main character, Max West…a Las Vegas-based investigator who’s part Spenser (from Robert B. Parker’s novels) and part Fox Mulder (from The X-Files). He’s tough, curious, stubborn, and deeply human. He’s also been living in my head for years, and now he gets to live on the page for everyone else.
And look…I thought writing the book would be the hard part.
Nope.
Finding someone who cares that you wrote a book?
Finding someone who thinks it’s worth their time, energy, and faith?
That part damn near broke me.
I spent months querying literary agents, and I’m just going to be blunt: it was more painful than applying for jobs on LinkedIn, which I didn’t think was possible. The cycle was endless: silence, canned rejections, polite “not for me,” and a few not-so-subtle reminders that I wasn’t diverse enough or that my story didn’t have enough “social justice messaging” to be “relevant” in the current market.
Cool.
Good to know the fictional Egyptian time-manipulation cult and Lazarus-beetles weren’t hitting the right DEI checkboxes.
Eventually, I hit a point where I thought, You know what? I’m done begging for permission to exist. So I started looking at publishers who accept unagented submissions…very few do…and who aligned with what I cared about: good storytelling, strong characters, and reader-first books.
That’s when I found Koehler Books.
Their mission, their messaging, their approach…it just clicked. So I rolled the dice and submitted my manuscript. I told myself that if I didn’t hear anything by the New Year, I’d look into self-publishing, give Max West a break, and move on.
Weeks went by.
Nothing.
I assumed that was my answer.
Then…on the day we were moving out of our Virginia house, living out of a hotel room, and prepping for the long drive back to Las Vegas…I got the email.
And let me tell you: I jumped for joy and almost cried.
If you know me, you know that last part is extremely rare. Like solar-eclipse rare.
For the first time, someone outside of my husband and a handful of close friends read my manuscript and said:
Yes. This is worth publishing. Let’s do this together.
It still feels unreal.
So here we are, officially on the road to publication. I’m excited, grateful, energized, and ready. No Rest for the Wicked is coming…and Max West is just getting started.
Thank you for being here at the beginning.
More soon.
— Kat
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