S.M. Kirkland is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years of experience covering politics, education, and crime, but her heart has always loved fiction. She has published three novels, ranging from Christian military fiction to space opera, and now to drama. She never thought about publishing another novel after having a stroke in 2015, but her passion and the voices in her head wouldn’t let her go. She reluctantly began typing away, at what has now become, “The Disposable.” While her other novels “Higher Honor” and “Higher Courage” show her overt love of Jesus, “The Disposable” takes a more covert approach, showing how God sprinkles His grace and mercy quietly and through unlikely people as He prepares them for what lies ahead. Kirkland holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of North Georgia, the Senior Military College of Georgia, and in Communication Disorders from Utah State University. When she isn’t writing, she spends her time working and taking care of her family, all with a drive for martial arts and a love for horses.

What does literary success look like to you?

I want to please God and entertain people. Pleasing God might sound crazy, given some of the things I write about, but if I can show others He’s there and He loves us, then I’ve succeeded. The downside to that is, I’ll probably have to wait until I’m dead to find out if I was a success! In the meantime, I’m just going to enjoy doing it.

My writing process is probably a little different than other writers. It’s not linear at all. I feel like it’s a messy wreck at times, but it works.

Dialogue is my strongest talent and many times, a scene and even the whole manuscript will be born because the voices in my head -I know they aren’t real. . .mostly- said something that caught my attention. So, I take that little exchange and start trying to figure out who said it, why did they say it, and what is the setting. Sometimes, it’s not a voice, sometimes it can be a song lyric that starts the conversation. It’s the same process of who and why.

Once I figure who and why, the rest works itself out. I put my fingers and the keyboard and it almost flows.

I’ll give a free copy of The Disposable to the first person who can guess which song helped shape Andre’s story. His started from an old song that still gets me in my feels.

I don’t have a lot of time to devote to large chunks of writing. I’m like the “lunch-break novelist.” I’ll just throw a few lines down on my lunch break or in between other responsibilities, but never underestimate how much you can write in fifteen minutes.

Mentally, if you’ve got the idea, just get it down, without worrying about editing. I can write two to three pages in fifteen to thirty minutes. That’s the rough draft. I’ll clean it up later, again in stages. Little bits at a time.

How I get the manuscript, I’ll figure out where my favorite scenes go in the timeline, then I’ll add other scenes, and then I’ll figure what scenes need to be written. Often, I’ll have an ending and a middle and I need to create the beginning of the story.

I also believe strongly in having an editor and a critique group. Once I take it as far as I can, I let my critique group or beta readers, take it for a drive. They are objective where as I’m madly in love or sometimes I really hate, what I’ve written.

After I take their suggestions into consideration, it goes to my personal editor. My publisher, Colorful Crow Publishing, has a great editor, but I send them a professionally edited draft. I’ve worked with Caprice Hokstad for years, and she is insanely talented as a writer, editor, and as a person. I count her as a friend but she’ll tell me when its not my best work.

One thing I have to watch for when I’m editing is if I can’t remember a throw-away character’s name from one writing session to the next, I’ll give them a new name just to keep my flow going. The detectives in The Disposable had several names before I gave them “real” names that went into my style guide.

Meet Saki, my tri-paw pup. But don’t feel bad for her—she picked a fight with the wrong dog. She can still get around very well on three legs! She face plants a lot, but doesn’t slow down.

If she feels I’m paying too much attention to my writing, she’ll push my hand off of the keyboard until I give her all the loves. (I’m surprised I get any writing done!)

We adopted her from a rescue and in the months following my stroke, she stayed by me. She’s a border collie/Aussie Shepherd mix and lays on my feet while I write, until, of course, she wants love.