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Date: 1/26/2021
WESTFIELD – While the COVID-19 pandemic has been a difficult time for everyone, one Westfield High School junior wrote her first novel, “Knox Hollow, Murder on Mayflower,” a murder mystery about a girl who moves to a small town in Massachusetts and gets wrapped up in a murder investigation.
Ever since she was a child, author Grace Kuhn said she loved mystery novels and that was why she ended up writing one.
“I have always loved reading mystery novels; they’ve been my favorite since I was pretty young. I kind of randomly got the idea for the main character when I first started and I didn’t know where to take it and I think I loved reading mystery so much that I decided to write one,” she said.
After writing for most of her life but never finishing any of her stories, Kuhn said she used the COVID-19 pandemic as a moment to sit down and finish a novel.
“I’ve always liked to write, but I never finished what I would write. It wasn’t really until the pandemic and everything was shut down and that I took the time to do it. I started really writing in March and then finished it in late June,” she said.
Kuhn said writing the book helped get her through the pandemic.
“It kind of became my saving grace during the pandemic because it gave me somewhere to put my energy and take my mind off everything. There was so much going on that we couldn’t control but I realized I could control how I carried myself and what I made of that time, it kept me from being negative,” she said.
One of the ways Kuhn said she came up with ideas for the scenes in the novel was by going out for a run and visualizing what happened.
“I love running and during the pandemic there wasn’t much to do and I definitely wanted to stay active. That’s where I thought a lot up of the book because I would go on runs and think about my characters and different scenes. I would picture them like movie scenes in my head before I wrote about them,” she said.
While writing, Kuhn said her parents and her two best friends helped motivate her to finish the book.
“I would write a chapter and my mom and dad would read it, but then I had my two best friends read it chapter by chapter, sometimes before I had even done any editing. That kept me motivated to not move onto another idea because they wanted to see how it ended,” she said.
Kuhn said it took about five months to edit the novel to its final version.
“Once I finished writing, I went through and printed out a version of it and I made a ton of edits. After that we sent out five copies to close family and friends and each one got a binder of 300 printed out pages, they helped me edit and revise, then I took their copies and made my edits before I read it over again,” she said.
While she was initially worried about getting the book published, Kuhn said the process was easier than expected.
“I thought it was going to be really difficult because I had no experience, but my dad had a friend from high school who self-published novels and he connected us. He made the process so easy for us and we published it through the Harvard Book Store,” she said.
Kuhn said she is already working on her next book and is thinking up ideas for a sequel to her first one.
“I have started another novel and I’ve written about 130 pages, it’s with different characters and a different story completely. And then I definitely have been thinking about a sequel in the future, so that’s an option,” she said.
With her book published, Kuhn said her cousin saw the book sitting in the window of the Harvard Book store in Cambridge.
“The book is actually in their store front window, but we had no idea. I have cousin who lives in that area and she went to pick her books up and she sent me a picture of the book in the window and I was blown away,” she said.
Between her dad, AJ, sending copies to his friends and receiving good reviews and receiving good reviews online, Kuhn said she did not expect this sort of reaction to her book.
“It’s insane because I never expected that this would happen, that I would publish a book. I’m pretty shy so I was very nervous to put the book out there. To see that people are reading what I wrote for months and months and that they are enjoying it is a crazy feeling,” she said.
While she wants to continue writing throughout her life, Kuhn said she wants to be a speech pathologist when she is older.
“Knox Hollow, Murder on Mayflower” is available for purchase on Amazon or through the Harvard Book Store.