I cannot believe that it has been nearly a year and a half since I updated this. I also can’t believe I managed to get the The Protector re-released in the middle of a pandemic lockdown. wtf.

So much has happened to so many of us, and I know it’s been a difficult few years. For me, it’s been a time of reckoning, a time for questioning what I really want to do with my life.

If you’ve been here in the past, you’ll notice that I am now “coming out of the closet” on this site. I’ve never made a secret of the fact that “Cooper West” is a pseudonym, but I’ve also been very careful in the past not to reveal that I am really KimBoo York.

That was mostly down to the fact that I had a professional career in higher-ed, and 12 years ago when I first jumped into the M/M romance arena, those were two things that did not combine well. There were colleagues who had lost jobs or been reprimanded for writing romance/erotica on the side, and as I had just graduated with my master’s degree, I was not in a position to buck the system.

I may not be in that position now, but I’m going to give it a go. I’ve realized that for however much I am grateful to have gotten my master’s degree in Library and Information Studies, using it as a launching point for a career in higher-ed was not the right choice for me. The best choice I could make at the time? Possibly…but still wrong, in a lot of ways.

Instead, I’m scrubbing back down to the foundations: writing. I’m combining my fiction writing, both as Cooper West and my “mainstream” author brand, K.C. York, with a creativity coaching business (The Author Alchemist) selling online courses. Not sure how that’s gonna go, but eh, it’s what I need to do!

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