Linda Kage spends her time at work surrounded with books, then goes home and writes them.
Right now the author, known in real life as Linda Grotheer, has five e-books available, four adult novels and one young adult book.
“I like romance,” said Kage, who concocted her pen name from her middle name, Kay, and the G from her actual last name.
She focuses on contemporary romance, set in present times. Kage’s heroines do not wear velvet bodices and billowing petticoats, nor do they have romantic interludes in horse-drawn carriages clopping through the streets of foggy London.
Raised on a dairy farm, Kage attended McCune Attendance Center, and said that the course of her writing career was set in the first grade.
“My teacher, Mrs. Coltrane, asked us to write poems, and she praised mine,” the author said. “I went to Southeast High School, and I had finished my first full-length book before I finished high school.”
She sent a manuscript off to Harlequin Romances, and received a rejection slip. Kage has done far better with electronic publishing.
“All of the things I’ve sold have been e-books,” she said. “My goal is to sell one I can see in a book store.”
The first book she sold in 2008 was her young adult romance titled “The Stillburrow Crush,” about a high school journalist, Carrie, who has a crush on Luke, handsome school athlete, but can’t imagine that her feelings would be reciprocated.
The book, available at www.TheWildRosePress.com, has done well. In fact, it’s a finalist in the Young Adult Non-Fiction/Fiction category of the 2011 Electronically Published Internet Coalition eBook Awards competition.
“I’ll know in March if I’ve won anything,” Kage said.
Her adult books include “The Trouble with Tomboys,” “Delinquent Daddy” and “How to Resist Prince Charming,” with “Hot Commodity” due out in February 2011. Anyone interested in purchasing any of these books, or wishing to keep up with Kage’s latest reviews, interviews and news, may visit www.lindakage.com. Her books are also available at Amazon.com.
Kage graduated from Pittsburg State University in 2002 with a degree in English with an emphasis in creative fiction writing. She is employed in the acquisitions department at Axe Library. She and her husband have a 9-month-old daughter, and the new mom has been devoting a lot of time to the baby.
“I have three books out on submission now, but mostly I’ve been revising older things I’ve written,” Kage said. “Writing might be a career for me in the future, but it’s more of a hobby now.”
