In 2008 I returned from China after a nearly 5-year living stint. I was broken. I felt hopeless because I was leaving behind what I felt was my reason for being. My passion. The thing that brought out the true me. I had started, organized, and led a volunteer group in a local orphanage. As a team, we did many really good things. We witnessed abuse and trauma, internalizing much of it, but we also improved and saved lives of children. We loved and we lost.
When it was time for me to come home, I felt empty.
In 2009, I took all the journal entries I’d been writing those five years and put them into my very first book, a memoir called Silent Tears; A Journey of Hope in a Chinese Orphanage.
Going back through everything made me re-live it. I suffered greatly emotionally and physically, but I got through it and that book eventually sold more than 100,000 copies and helped many more children than I ever did with boots on the ground. It led to people adopting from China, supporting the children in foster care and other ways, and encouraged others around that country to do something similar.
After that, I went back to work in corporate HR. I loved it at first, then I found myself drowning in big egos and office politics. I hated it.
In 2013, I decided to write another book. This time fiction and based on a true story. It was called Chasing China and was immediately rejected. So I tried again. I wrote A Thread Unbroken, and it was accepted.
That began my career in writing fiction and building my readership. I’ve made so many close friends from my readers, and I’ve created a network of individuals that care for me, and for each other. In my fiction, I use my own childhood and early adulthood trauma to write my characters. My work is known for packing a huge emotional wallop.
Today, nearly 16 years after that first book published, I released book #40. It’s number 12 in a series that has shocked me with how well it’s done.
I’m not sure what magic I captured with Hart’s Ridge, but I hope I can repeat it as I keep giving you more and more of the Gray family, and their small town mysteries.
I give thanks to all of you who support my work, and I thank the good Lord above for giving me the ability to give voices to those who carry trauma in their lives, and find forgiveness and healing through the happily ever afters I write.
Much love,
Kay Bratt
Kay Bratt
Every Little Thing
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