The Author Behind the Story Blog Series - Ken Kuhlken

There are subcultures within the larger society that exist for everyone. As a writer, this is no truer than when a group of us like-minded folks get together at writers conferences. For the first two or three conferences I attended, I sat in a critique group that met each day of the conference for about three hours. As with most critique groups, they wrestle with grammar and syntax and POV and a plethora of other "writerly" things. However, in these first couple of groups, we did some of the "writerly" stuff, but we also tackled our writing from a bigger picture. How the writing fit theologically was just as important (actually more so) as whether or not this verb went with that adverb or not. These discussions then branched out into what makes a good story good versus what hinders a story's appeal and impact.

The gentleman who conducted these critique group sessions at a writers conference, the first ones I had ever attended at such a venue, was author Ken Kuhlken. Since then, Ken and I have kept in touch, and I am so happy he has agreed to join us here on the Florida front porch, all the way from Sunny California.

Welcome, Ken! Give us a quick bio. In fifty words or less, who is Ken Kuhlken?

A while back it occurred to me that the only time I am truly content is when playing golf or baseball or softball or hanging out with friends or family or reading or writing. Now, the only one of those I could even hope to make a living from is writing. So that's what I feel called to do.

  

What educational background do you have? 

I sort of went to high school, but other concerns, like death and illness, (as detailed somewhat in Reading Brother Lawrence) intruded, so I didn't begin to do what my Zoë has done this year, which is apply to many fine schools. I instead went to San Diego State, which, at the time was much more challenging than it has since become (I know because I taught and worked as an adviser there for a dozen years). And after I decided high school teaching was awfully hard on a guy whose attention drifts all over, I tried to find the best school for a graduate degree in fiction writing and learned it was the University of Iowa. I applied and got turned down. I was admitted to a summer session and had a class with John Irving who then told the people to let me into the regular program, and they did. So I spent a couple years in Iowa City and earned an MFA degree.

I didn't know that. We lived in Des Moines for a couple of years and had some interesting times with one professor from that college who disagreed with my assertion that Wiccans worshipped alongside satanists, loosely speaking. Stirred up quite the hornet's nest...Small world, for sure!

Are you married? Single? Have kids?

To answer this, read "Old Man, New Baby."

For all the pet lovers out there, answer this question: Do you have any?

My cat began 2019 with a urinary tract blockage, which cost plenty for emergency care. After that, we learned he was epileptic, which means we need to medicate him three times each day. And during all this, I have found that many people consider spending lots of money to save the lives of their dogs reasonable, but can't understand why anybody would spend much to save a cat. This puzzles me. 

What makes you cringe?

My office partner and close friend at the University of Arizona wasn't usually judgmental, but coming from a family of Brahmins in India, he had high standards for behavior. If somebody acted out of accord with those standards, he took offense and considered that person uncivilized, which to him was the gravest transgression. Example: a contractor gave him a price for a fence then charged about twice the estimate, with little explanation. That man he declared uncivilized, and told him so.

Lately, I cringe at behavior I consider uncivilized. Like profanity for no good reason. I have a coffee cup with a Mark Twain quote: "If angry, count five. If very angry, curse." I go along with that, but I prefer civil language, and the same holds for my reading, writing, choice of movies and television, and even comedians. Unless profanity serves a valid purpose, I much prefer to avoid it.

Everybody seems to have a bucket list. Do you? If so, what’s on it? If not, why not? 

I want to become a perpetual tourist.

My wife and I do too. I know you can write about places and sell articles to magazines that cover travel...to cover your travel expenses...hmmm. Excuse me, Ken. I think I hear my retirement calling.

Besides storytelling, what talents do you have?

At one time, I was a very good golfer. Not great, but very good. As a kid, I played baseball well, but then I switched to golf. And I think I have become, over many years of trying and learning, a pretty good father.

Besides the usual things authors face, has there been an unusual event that changed your perspective about being an author?

My grandma, with whom we lived my first nine years, was an accomplished painter and storyteller. I learned to appreciate stories more than anything, and attempted a novel in eighth grade. When I was fifteen, my dad died, and then my mom got hospitalized for months with spinal meningitis. While she was gone, my best friend, another only child, moved in with me, and we became ever closer. Then he died in a car accident. And circumstances leading up to his death presented a whole world of mysteries I am still trying to resolve. My way of resolving mysteries is to tell stories about them.

Do you have a crazy, interesting, behind-the-scenes story about the publishing world you’d like to tell your readers without boring them to death with industry gobbledygook?

My friend Alan Russell and I traveled together for book signings. We catalogued our misadventures in fact and fiction, in Road Kill and No Cats, No Chocolate.

Of all the stories/books you have written, which one is your favorite? And what compelled you to write this story?

Since my favorite is always the one I finished last, I'm going to tell about For America, which is actually five short books.

For America has been a long time coming. The story began when I rode in an old Dodge pickup with my friend Laurent to Iowa. Later, I wrote some pages about the trip and called them "The Gas Crisis."

Raymond Carver, a wonderful writer of mostly short stories, told about waking one morning and thinking of the line, "He was vacuuming when the telephone rang." So he sat and wrote that line and kept writing until he finished a remarkable story.

On a larger scale, the same happened to me. I began writing about a road trip and got carried away. My daughter, Darcy, at age five, noticed me standing in the kitchen staring at nothing, and remarked, "Oh no, crazy ol' daddy's working on the grass crisis again."  

The story took me over. I have long felt that, though I often interrupted to write other novels, this one I was destined to write.

Do you ever receive negative reviews from readers? If so, how do you respond when you see them?

If I expected everyone to appreciate what I write, I would either have long ago learned to write by some genre formula or gone mad. I write what I feel inspired to write and try my best not to expect any particular reaction, though I'm human enough to hope my stories will touch some people.

If you had one person you could meet (think outside the Bible here) and could spend as much time as you wanted with that individual, who would it be?

Marilyn Monroe comes to mind. And not only because she was fun to look at. I mean, we could talk about Arthur Miller, Joe DiMaggio, and maybe JFK.

And I would love to spend an eternity hanging out with each of my kids and my grandson. It seems I never get enough time with them.

What’s the craziest thing you have ever done?

I had a solid job teaching creative writing at California State University, Chico. It was a lovely town and pleasant work, and they gave me tenure, made me an associate professor, and my colleagues and students were mostly a delight. But the way things turned out, when my kids were in San Diego and my mother was getting old, I gave up that job. Hardly anybody gives up a tenured professorship unless they get offered a better one. Lots of people, even my mother, said, "No way. You really are crazy." 

Why do you live where you live?

Where I live, in San Diego, most people seem to think it's not only the best place in the world to live, but that it's the only place a reasonable person would care to live.

Though I've spent most of my life in the San Diego area, I've also lived for lengthy spells in Chico, California, Iowa City, Iowa, Athens, Greece, and Tucson, Arizona. I would be happy to move to any of them again. Mostly, where I live has to do with people. Where most of the people who mean most to me are, that's where I want to be. If they scatter all over the place, I intend to do a lot of travelling. 

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers about you, or anything we didn’t cover?

Recently my Darcy convinced me to start listening to audiobooks. She steered me to Audible, which I found okay except that it costs about $15 a month for one audiobook, and then it tries to sell me others. I can easily consume an audiobook a week, so I checked out Scribd, which I had encountered a while back, and found it much better in several ways. With Scribd I get all the audiobooks and ebooks I can use for $10 per month. And, just as exciting, lots of my books are available on Scribd in ebook (not yet on audio, though I hope to remedy that). So, dear reader, if you join Scribd, you can read a trilogy of Hickey family crime novels, the entire five books that make up For America, and more of my work, all from Scribd, for hardly anything. Also, I have communicated with Scribd people about a couple issues, and they are mighty responsive and civilized people. I am a big fan of Scribd.

Ken, it's been a pleasure having you here on the Florida front porch!

Readers, if you wish to follow up on this interview and check out Ken's writing, subscribe to his newsletter, or find out more about him in general, here are some sites you can visit:

To reach him, go to kenkuhlken.net or join him at Perelandra College.

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Until next time, may God bless America, and more importantly, may America bless God!

Kevin