Mia Kileen's Blog

Every story begins somewhere.

Every story begins somewhere. Some begin with a single sentence. Others begin with a dream. Mine began with a nightmare I never expected to live through. 

What if the stories we dismissed as folklore held a grain of truth? What if history remembered only the loudest voices while the quiet ones slipped into legend? What if something hidden beneath the Arkansas pines had been watching us all along waiting for the right moment to reveal itself?

I have always loved stories that linger long after that final page. The kind that leave you thinking on the drive home or while putting the dishes away days later. Those are the stories I wanted to write. I found that great loss and love often reveal the stories that need to be told. Through generations of family stories to today.

My first novel, The Most Peculiar Life of a Boy named Cliff, came to me due to the most heart retching loss of my life. The pain seared my heart like a knife. Breathing was nearly impossible due to hours of nonstop crying. But I picked up a pen, and started to write how I felt. Those feelings became stories made from memories of my father. I found solace in putting every scenario down on paper and making it all conclude on one of the best endings for my father, to honor him and his life. His love of fiction seeped into my bones from a very young age. Suddenly, I had the power to end things right. I found a great deal of therapy in writing. Writing introduced me to the incredible feeling of sharing a world that had lived only in my imagination. It taught me that characters have  way of taking lives of their own.

Then came Luella Jane. Named after my grandmother. What began as a single idea slowly grew into something much larger than I expected. It became a world filled with forgotten history, ancient promises, faith, family, unlikely friendships, and an immortal being who has lived entirely too long to tolerate foolishness. If you haven't met him yet, I hope you'll allow me to introduce you in Luella Jane: Beneath Arkansas Pines.

As a writer, my passion lies in crafting tales that delve into the rich, complex world of Southern Gothic. Expect to find eerie landscapes, haunted histories, and characters with shadowed pasts. 

This website will be more than a place to announce new books. Some days we will wander through the forests of Arkansas. And perhaps, if we are very quiet, we will hear an old story whispering through the pines.

However you found your way here, I am grateful you stopped by for a while. Welcome! I bid you a fond farewell for now. Until next time.

The path through the woods has only just begun.

-Mia Kileen

Thank you for walking this path with me.