Stories about living, loving, and learning in the American South.
Welcome, y’all
What is Huckleberry Scout? It’s a blog and an online home for my writing.
What do you write? I wrote a novel, Taking the Long Way Home. It follows three best friends from Texas: Lissa, Caroline and Hunter as they navigate the life decisions that take them away from Texas. Lissa must return home to care for her dying father and make peace with her past. This includes revisiting the events that led her to work at Planned Parenthood and estranged her from her mother. Luckily, her girlfriends are there to help her through.
I also write random thoughts on living, loving, and learning…in the South.
Why is your site called Huckleberry Scout? The name actually comes from a follow up book I’m working on that follows Hunter as she navigates marriage and career. She launches a Southern-culture focused magazine (think Garden and Gun) and names it “Huckleberry Scout” after beloved characters from Southern fiction: Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Harper Lee’s Scout Finch. Both were stubborn, outspoken champions for their own moral convictions and both loved biscuits and ham, overalls, going barefoot, and long languid summers in the South. I have a great amount of affection for all of the above and am thankful Hunter came up with the name so I could borrow it.
Taking the Long Way Home
Ready to dive in and read the novel? Meet Lissa Hudson, her two best friends, Caroline and Hunter and dive into Lissa’s backstory in this girlfriend-driven novel with some laughs, tears and politics thrown in.
Author’s Note
Several months ago, I found an old journaling notebook of mine from fourth grade. In it was a post it note from my mother, “What ever happened to Kirsten the author?” My mother passed in 2014 so finding the note written in her beautiful looped script was literally like receiving a message from beyond. It was a kick-in-the-ass reminder of the young girl I was in fourth grade whose dream was to be a published writer. In my mid-forties now, I have, in fact written a novel. I’ve even started two others. But I haven’t shared them with the world, yet…
Publishing these days is hard. I sent out 20 or 30 query letters to agents and didn’t hear back from most. The others sent polite rejections which still stung. Talking to people in the industry, I was encouraged to think about maybe adding an element of suspense. Could I add a lead character of color? Maybe add more family drama? Make it more like [insert top-selling novel].
Well…I could. But that didn’t sit well with me. When I wrote the book, it felt like I was just the conduit to some larger creative force. And this creative force didn’t want to write a thriller or marital drama. This creative force wrote what it did and imagined it being released with pictures, illustrations, playlists – things that you get more from a website than a book.
So…I swallowed hard, said a prayer or ten, and decided that a website is what I would create.
On this site you will find a copy of my novel available for purchase. If you choose to buy access, know it comes along with commentary on the writing process, notes on inspiration, links to places featured in the book, illustrations – a lot of other cool things. But you don’t have to buy it. You can also just hang out here where I will blog about things I love: profiles of some of the amazing women I know; snippets about the incredible places I’ve lived; and living in New Orleans while raising kids in this wild raucuosy gumbo of a town.