Story & Lesson Highlights with Kelley Gusich of Planet Earth–so far.

We’re looking forward to introducing you to Kelley Gusich. Check out our conversation below.

Kelley, a huge thanks to you for investing the time to share your wisdom with those who are seeking it. We think it’s so important for us to share stories with our neighbors, friends and community because knowledge multiples when we share with each other. Let’s jump in: Are you walking a path—or wandering?
This was a very interesting question, because I kind of feel like it’s the same thing. Like wandering can be a path of its own just not a ‘constructed’ one, or probably not a logical one. Haha.

I do believe things happen for a reason, so maybe that means I believe I am walking a path, just not one that was constructed for me beforehand. Yeah, that really doesn’t make any sense, does it? I am wandering through a waking path.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Haha WHY is this part always so complicated? My business card says “just Kelley” Between my first and second marriage, and then my writing pseudonym as my maiden name and my desire to just go back to my maiden name and use it for everything, means the naming question gets tough. My sons and my husband are all ‘Gusichs’, so I want to be a Gusich, but sometimes I feel like I should just be Kelley all the time. Like Cher. Or Madonna.

I used to be a high school English and drama teacher, but now I am a writer. I am obsessed with books of every kind and the ones I like to write fall into two main categories: cozy murder mystery (because I like murder mysteries but I don’t like blood and gore, hence ‘cozy’) and Young Adult Paranormal (because I used to TEACH high schoolers (Young Adults), plus I was one, and I know of zero teens who haven’t wished for a supernatural gift to deal with the problems of adolescence (paranormal). Zero humans, actually—who doesn’t want some available magic to address life’s issues?

Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
I had to think a lot about this one. I feel like there is a classmate’s birthday party that I wasn’t invited to in the fourth or fifth grade. Well, I WAS invited to it, but only because my classmate’s mother made her invite me. She didn’t want to, but… anyway, I found out after the fact (by overhearing some partygoers talking) that I was only there because of a parental ruling, and it broke my heart.

NOW I know that little kids are mean and little girls can be especially catty, but I also know at this point in my ADULT life that most people do mean things because of their own insecurities and their own issues. And these were fourth grade girls, for Pete’s sake!

Right now I think life is way too short to spend all my time worrying about how other people see me. I intend to be kind and interested in everything, and that shapes how I SEE everything!

Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
I’m very fond of breathing, so parachuting from airplanes or walking alone down a dark alley are situations I avoid, but I don’t know if that’s a fear. I’m afraid of not finishing what I start–but that’s super vague, isn”t t?

So I picked another question. What does that mean in this context–giving up? I guess if I stopped writing stories that would be giving up, but there’s always another story to tell, isn’t there? So I guess the answer is nope–there’s never been a time I almost gave up. Life’s too short, if you’d excuse the way overdone colloquialism.

I can understand the concept of giving up, I guess, when you’re at a point when you lose someone–through a death or the end of a relationship. But I’m lucky in that I was born into a very supportive family. I don’t think ‘giving up’ was ever a part of the discussion. Adapting was the lesson I learned.

Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What would your closest friends say really matters to you?
I called my BFF in Kansas to ask her this question. She said ‘friends, family and logic.’ I was like “LOGIC? I am the least logical person I know.” But after a long conversation, she decided the word was ‘practicality’ as opposed to logic. I think I’m a little frou-frou for BOTH words, if you want to know the truth, but she is my closest friend for the past 40 years, so I’ll have to go with her list. 😀

Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. If immortality were real, what would you build?
First of all, I have to say that the question itself is bizarre to me, because what would I BUILD? I would think that you would use the word what would I DO or maybe where would I lLIVE? Or what would be my major superpower? I don’t know, anything about that particular verb choice: what would I build?

OK, let’s try it. I would build a movie set. A movie set for the book ‘Down in the Belly of the Whale’ that I have been trying to turn into a screen project or a streamer project now for the past couple of years. It’s the only stand alone novel I have ever written – usually I am into series of books as opposed to standalone books, but this one, I feel, has some special elements that deserve it to be seen by a wider audience. However, I apparently need a TELEVISION agent to get this book turned into something besides a book, and I don’t even have a literary agent. I am zero for zero as far as agent-types go.

I would then have to build directors, I guess, and actors, and producers and riggers and gaffers and PAs, and wow, I am aware based on my love of productions of any sort, that turning Down in the Belly of the Whale into a movie by myself would be a trick and a half. And I’m not really that ambitious, if you want to know the truth. I love telling stories, and the stories that are in my head have to come out on the page, or else I get sick to my stomach, but all of this extraneous-non-storytelling-stuff is not in my wheelhouse.

I would use magical thinking, I guess, and build my own little world that has all the requirements of giving this story to anyone who wants it, or maybe more importantly, to anyone who’d get something USEFUL out of reading it. This would obviously take a lot of time, but hey: I am IMMORTAL, right? Right.😜

p.s. if I was immortal, the list of things I would do is also …haha, immortal. Immeasurable.

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