Have you ever tobogganed down a snow-covered hill, slammed face first into a powder soft snowdrift and come up laughing? Picked Saskatoon berries on a blistering summer day? Pickled beets? Waded along the edges of a slough? Watched gophers play in a farmer’s field? Okay, only a city girl does that – a farmer would have different ideas about a national symbol that is truly a pest.

Hi, I’m Ryshia Kennie and I’ve tobogganed through powder snow and spent futile hot summer days as a child waiting for a gopher, that elusive prairie rodent, to exit his den and into my waiting hands. None ever did. I was born and raised on the prairie. It’s miles of wide-open spaces here on the Canadian grain belt, sparsely populated and that is what I love, that and the brilliant blue skies in winter and summer.

Despite all that, my heart beats the pulse of an intrepid traveler. My feet itch while my bags impatiently wait in storage for that next adventure when I head for places previously unknown but often well researched. After all, I might write fiction but it’s got to be accurate. And it’s in those foreign and romantically exotic places that many of my stories are born. Tiny little wisps of ideas suddenly awake screaming into the light as my plane powers through the night sky, another adventure about to begin. But that’s not quite the beginning of my love for words and tales of other worlds. So let’s start there, at the beginning – shall we?

My recollection begins when I was little and my mother had to drag me out of the neighborhood library kicking and screaming with the maximum allowance of six books clutched tightly in my sweaty little hands. I loved books and have always wanted to create my own stories that others could get lost in. Instead, I trained as a nurse but after two years of fascinating academics and horrific job training, I passed the graduation roses to my mother and went on to study administration, land a government job, travel the world and develop an eclectic group of interests ranging from wine-making to creating gourmet pet food recipes.

While I continued to write, sometimes only poetry in the margins of a government document (oops, did I do that?), it wasn’t until I found the romance genre that I discovered my niche in the writing world. And now, there’s no turning back.

My debut novel is set in one of my favourite places on earth, the Qu’Appelle Valley where I spent many an idyllic childhood day tobogganing down snowy winter hillsides or summers swimming in the valley lakes.

Much of our prairie history stands forgotten in the midst of fields of wheat, the sun beating down on the mellowed wood of pioneer shanties that are now empty, yet full of stories that are long silent.

Still the wind gusts and skitters lifting dirt and covering the remnants of one-room schoolhouses, buffalo trails and arrow heads that may once have graced a Cree arrow. The history dotting the fields combined with the vivid stories graciously shared by those incredible survivors of the Great Depression that ravaged the North American continent in the 1930’s, brought together the kaleidoscope of ideas that became "From the Dust".

So grab that cup of tea and let’s have a wee chat:

www.ryshiakennie.com  (My home on the web)

www.ryshia.blogspot.com

Or for a bit more personal - I’d love to hear what you think, answer your questions, chat. Drop me a line at: ryshia@ryshiakennie.com

Published: December 2007 Publisher: Black Lyon Publishing Available at: Amazon.com, Amazon.uk, Barnes & Noble

What happens when a desperate widow inherits the same farm
that a wealthy man claims?

Eva Edwards has given up a lot of things in her life.
She won’t give up the farm.

Tate Prescott Brown believes farming is something he understands. So when he inherits a Saskatchewan farm he gets in his coupe and heads for the prairies.  

"From the Dust" is the touching story of story of a man and woman each struggling between love and independence and misguided feelings of what might be right for the other.

Read our review of From the Dust