Learning to Walk with Grief

Posted on October 23, 2026 by McKenna Dean

The day we brought him home

We are absolutely shattered by the events of this week.

Yesterday, we said goodbye to our year old puppy due to the discovery of a huge, invasive abdominal tumor. We went from “I think there might be something wrong with the puppy” to “he has an inoperable tumor with a grim prognosis and no good treatment options” so fast we’re still reeling from it.

The puppy who had just had his first birthday. Who was still eating, and playing, and barking at the neighbor’s dog across the street, albeit not quite like the Tasmanian devil he’d been a few weeks earlier. Who’d started off strong in his agility class but then began showing less enthusiasm as the weeks went by. I chalked some of it up to my own training skills, but the red light warning flashed in my mind.

Then I noticed he was peeing more than the senior dog in the house, and took him in for tests. The vast majority of his lab work was normal, and the things that weren’t were only slightly off. But my gut kept telling me there was something wrong, seriously wrong. Earlier this week, I requested an abdominal ultrasound and they discovered a massive tumor. We proceeded straight to a CT scan, only to learn the lesion had already invaded major blood vessels, including the aorta. The surgeon was astonished he was still walking, let alone eating, playing, and barking like a normal puppy.

But he wasn’t normal. With each passing day, I saw a little of his spark diminish. When you’re blazing like a comet, it’s hard for anyone to notice when your light becomes a little dimmer, but I could sense it. The ultrasound diagnosis still came as a shock. No one was expecting that. The CT report was a nightmare to read, with the stark implication that at any moment, the tumor could dissect one of his major blood vessels and he could bleed out.

And so we made the terrible, hard decision to put him to sleep on a beautiful autumn day when he was a little uncomfortable but still happy. Before we were faced with making the same decision on an emergency basis because he was in great distress.

I am gutted. I’m struggling to make sense of this, to understand why such a young dog would develop such an aggressive tumor. We’re following up with the pathologist to find out what we were dealing with, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that we must have done something wrong, something we overlooked. Something to explain this additional and unfair horribleness in a world that seems determined to crush us right now.

My place of work has been incredibly kind, giving me time off to process this. But the house is too empty, and I’d almost rather be elbows deep in someone else’s problems so that I can do what I’ve done with every other major loss in the past decade: suck it up, shrug it off, and move on. Maybe that’s why I’m falling apart now because I didn’t allow myself to feel those other losses in any meaningful way. I’ve treated grief like an unwelcome guest who wants to sucker punch me and knock me down. Perhaps I need to look at it differently. In the form of a translucent brown and white collie trotting along ahead of me on the trail, occasionally looking back to see if I’m coming.

I promised myself that if there was any lesson to be learned here, it was to appreciate every single moment that I get with my loved ones from now on. To stop giving so much of myself to everything else that I have nothing left to give at the end of the day to those I love most. To be present with them here and now, and not when I finally put the phone down, turn off the TV, or get off the computer. To make sure they realize how much they are loved every day that I share with them.

It’s a bitter lesson to learn.

The house is far too quiet today. There have been times in the past year when I could have wished for a little peace and quiet. Now I would give anything to have my little Tasmanian devil back again. But for now, he’ll be ghosting my steps as a constant reminder of how precious the time you have now is.

the day we said goodbye

The Disappearance of Silos

Posted on October 11, 2026 by McKenna Dean

The fringes of hurricane Isaias are brushing over us today, having rolled in during the night with heavy rain. As such, I decided to forgo my usual tramp in the woods with the dogs, not wanting to get caught out in one of the possible predicted storms. Instead, I took them for a walk in between downpours in our neighborhood.

Well, technically, the neighborhood behind us. See, I’m surrounded by a wild thicket on three sides, and the front of our property opens onto a busy road. When I first moved here 20 years ago, the only access to a safe walking zone was to either get in the car and drive somewhere, or cut through the back of the property where a path led to a ridge occupied by only a dirt road and a magnificent view.

A white and blue silo side by side in front of a red barn, with a background of mountains covered in autumn leaves.

Oct 28 2015

I used to walk my big German Shepherd up there because there was little traffic and it was peaceful. On days when we had more time, I would take him down to the nearby school, and walk back through a huge empty field occupied by a lone, enormous tree. That tree was gorgeous, like Yggdrasil or Crann Bethadh, spreading wide arms to the sky, deeply rooted in the ground. Once you passed this tree and climbed the steep hill back to the top of the ridge, you could stand on the dirt road and look back the way you came, over the fields that stretched toward the mountains, dotted with a few homes, and the notable presence of a farm with silos.

I got into the habit of taking photos of those silos on most of my walks. Having a smartphone made it easier with time, and I liked catching the same view on different days during the passing of seasons and years.

March 25 2015

Over the years, things changed. Oh, so many things have changed. The animals I moved here with are all gone now, and one of the dogs I’ve gotten since is turning gray around the muzzle. I noticed he has cataracts the other day. I’m a grounded horsewoman now, having lost both horses during this time as well. A twenty pound container of cat litter now feels heavy when fifty pounds of grain did not. My hair is thinner, and my clothes are tighter. On many levels, I feel as though I did not consent to this, but apparently by virtue of being a menopausal woman, I did.

Spring 2016

Other changes occurred as well. They paved the dirt road. They began building houses all along the ridge, blocking out the view of the valley, and giving it to people in five hundred thousand dollar homes on properties the size of postage stamps with an aggressive HOA.

Sept 9 2022

Then they came for Yggdrasil. I knew it was coming because they had begun excavating in the field where we walked, laying down the foundations for a sea of half a million dollar homes with a two car garage big enough for the SUVs and pickup trucks. It hurt just the same, and I wept for a tree that had to be hundreds of years old, bulldozed and ground into splinters with no regard for its beauty or value.

July 29 2025

The silos got a little harder to see as the new developments went up, but they were still there, on farmland separate from the subdivisions. And the construction wasn’t all bad: the subdivisions put in paved walking paths behind the new properties, which made walking in areas that now had much higher traffic a little safer. But it was hard sometimes not to look back on how it used to be and remember the wild beauty of it.

Oct 28 2025

The silos became a thing for me. Something I would frequently photograph, especially with the change of the seasons. So today, when it was raining and misty, I told myself that even if it wasn’t a good day to take the dogs for a hike in the woods, at least I was likely to get a good photo of the silos.

July 17 2026

Only today when I looked for them, they weren’t there. I couldn’t believe it at first. During the hottest part of the summer, I only took the dogs out after dark, but since it’s been cooler, we’ve been back to our usual walk at dusk. The silos have been such an unchanging presence on my walk that it’s possible I’ve taken them for granted, and they have been gone longer than I realized. Recently new construction has gotten underway, with new roads being put in and plots being bulldozed to create more foundations. Parts of the walking path have been closed due to the construction, so maybe I just missed the disappearance of the silos. Or maybe it only recently happened. Or maybe visibility was so poor this morning they were there and I just couldn’t see them.

It’s bizarre how much I need this last possibility to be the correct one. It’s funny how I’ve weathered loss after loss in the past decade–family members, beloved pets, the person I used to be–but it is the absence of these damned silos that seems to gut me now. In all likelihood, the farm could no longer make a profit. The costs of fertilizer and deiseal are through the roof, and a farm owner, faced with increasing debt and the odds of no one else in their family wanting to take it on, would be a fool to refuse to sell their land to a developer for millions. His or her own children probably pushed them to make the deal, and honestly, it was the best choice for them. How can small farmers hope to compete with the likes of huge factory farms getting subsidies from the government? This unknown person can’t be expected to hang onto a financial albatross simply because I need one constant in my life, one thing to make me feel grounded when the ground around us all is like quicksand. Take the money and run, even though we have enough subdivisions and they aren’t making any more land.

At least it’s not a data center.

Tomorrow, when the weather clears, I’ll go back out to see if I’ve made a mistake. But I don’t think I have.

Nov 2 2025

Edit: so today, I took the dogs for their usual walk, and much to my relief, the silos were still there. The rain and fog did obscure them from view, and yet I think you can see why they may have been easy to miss. The sea of new development surrounds them, lapping at their base like waves at the foot of a lighthouse.

But at least for now, one of my touchstones still exists.

October 12 2026

A birthday, a bad dye job, and a new release

Posted on June 28, 2026 by McKenna Dean

I have a birthday coming up soon. Not a “big” one, but big enough. I’m not feeling particularly sanguine about it. For starters, we’re about to get hit with the kind of heat dome that Europe has been facing. I’ve never been a summer girl. My mother hated air conditioning when I was growing up. My dad had a unit in his bedroom because he worked nights and needed to sleep during the day. I used to lie on the floor outside his door for the tiny blast of arctic air that escaped under the sill. At night, I’d lie in my bed, waiting for the blessed moment with the oscillating fan turned my way, gasping for air like a little beached bluegill.

The older I get, the less heat tolerant I become. So I am not looking forward to the coming weeks. I am an autumn girl. I wrote this opening paragraph for A Nose for Death (Ginny Reese Mysteries Book 4) that was a love letter to autumn:

Autumn is my absolute favorite time of year. And not just “fall” but autumn in every sense of the word. It’s the crackle of dry leaves underfoot as they skitter across the sidewalk on a windy day. The smell of woodsmoke in the air, and the wet mulchy scent of damp earth. It’s the honking of geese overhead on a cold, gray afternoon, the mournful sound resonating in your bones as you pull out your heavy sweaters and boots for the first time of the season. It’s how the spectrum of sunlight shifts from white to gold, slanting through trees with leaves of yellow, orange, and red, lighting up the last of the emerald-green blades of grass in the fields with an intensity seldom seen at any other time of year. It’s waking to air so crisp, it’s like biting into a fresh apple, with tracings of frost on the windowpanes.

But then I had to move the events in that story to early spring, which forced me to cut that paragraph. I saw a post yesterday that said there are only 19 Sundays left until fall and I almost wept at the thought. I was immediately hit with the fear that seasons are a thing of the past, and all we will ever experience from here on out is endless summer. My idea of hell on earth.

Since I’m not feeling great about turning another year older in a world that is increasingly hostile, I decided I would change up my hair color. I dye my hair regularly. When I was young, it was mouse-brown and now that I am old, it is mouse-gray. Not a nice dark iron gray or a pretty silver but the color of a juvenile Peromyscus leucopus, known as the white-footed mouse to you and me. (A vector for the hantavirus and a reservoir for Lyme, thank you very much).

So I got the bright idea that since I couldn’t lose 40 pounds before my birthday, despite the assurances of those diets featured on the covers of women’s magazines displayed at the checkout at the grocery store, I would go for a color change. I’ve been leaning red for a while now, but my mouse-gray hair is getting more stubborn about taking up color. I’ve been using an auburn shade trying for Molly Ringwald in her John Hughes era. Instead, I get an anemic strawberry blonde.

So yeah. It’s a Friday evening and I’ve had a glass of wine. Earlier I’d bought a box of home dye with a punchier shade. A deeper auburn. I prefer darker colors on myself, but that’s another thing aging does… the makeup and hair colors that used to look great on you now only emphasize your age. (I should really start following some “mature women” influencers to see about working around that…) But just then I was thinking, “why not?”

Welp. I’m not sharing the results. Do you remember when Gillian Anderson went SUPER RED on the X-Files? To the point that they had a couple of bit part characters reference the color as proof she must be an alien because no one had hair that color. Yeah. I would have been pleased if I got that. Instead, I have something more along the line of… magenta. I’m sure it would look perfectly fine on someone else. I’m told it really brings out the hazel in my eyes. At least hair mistakes are short-lived for me because I gave up on long hair ages ago and now keep a permanent pixie cut.

The irony of this hair-coloring mishap doesn’t escape me, however. Something very similar happens to my main character Morgan Frost in my upcoming release, Hexes, Lies, and Alibis. She too, was hoping for a nice pick-me-up red but because she was experimenting with her newly-discovered magical powers (and made the rookie mistake of substituting ingredients in her spell), she wound up with something totally unexpected. That scene was written months ago, and I didn’t intend to reenact it for my birthday!

If you like cozy fantasies featuring found families, midlife women coming into their strength and power, ghost dogs, and a frustrating new neighbor who may or may not have wings (and is kind of hot), then check out Hexes, Lies, and Alibis.

When Morgan Frost inherits property from her grandmother, she discovers the derelict farm is actually a portal to a universe where technology fails and magic rules. In a world where people use magic for everything from heating water to battling mythological creatures, Morgan faces a steep learning curve for survival. Especially since her grandmother was murdered by someone wishing to take over The Grange, granting them access to our world of science and technology. It’s up to Morgan and her new friends to see that this doesn’t happen.

Hexes, Lies, and Alibis (The Myth Element Series) by M.K. Dean is now available for pre-order on your favorite platforms. Release date June 30, 2026.

Amazon and these retailers.

Why does every Cozy Paranoromal feature a Mid-Life Witch?

Posted on June 20, 2026 by McKenna Dean

One of my favorite genres is the cozy paranormal mystery. Like all cozy mysteries, these usually feature a female amateur sleuth seeking to create a new life for herself in a new community, when she is faced with a sudden death that somehow requires her involvement in order to bring the criminals to justice.

What makes the paranormal cozy mystery different is that, unlike the cozy genre in general, the protagonist is usually in her mid-life.

I have a theory about this. I think it is because for many of us, mid-life is when our bodies and minds undergo dramatic changes. Our children are reaching adulthood and our roles with them are changing. We can see our futures in our aging parents and it terrifies us. We become conscious of how little time we have left and how much of ourselves we have given away for decades. The bottom of the hourglass holds more sand than the top, and yet those grains keep trickling relentlessly downward. Exhaustion, anger, and resentment are our constant companions, as well as that little voice that keeps asking, “Is this all there is?”

I think the fact so many protagonists in cozy paranormal mysteries are witches coming into their power in mid-life embraces all these concepts and more. Mid-life is a time when we take stock of our lives and wonder what is the best use of our remaining time. We’re less inclined to be people-pleasers. We’re tired of being taken for granted, for solving all the problems without getting any of the recognition. To paraphrase the great Nora Roberts, “our field of f*cks is fallow.”

I also believe it is a time when many of us, if we’re lucky, recognize the power we’ve always held. We come into our own for perhaps the first time in our lives. Not as someone’s daughter or wife, not as mother or reliable employee. But for who we are as ourselves. Or maybe we sense that power is there, but we’re unable or afraid to tap into it. Perhaps the appeal of the mid-life witch is the desire to uncover our power but we don’t know how. The middle-aged protagonist who suddenly is able to start fires with her mind or inexplicably can understand the thoughts of her cat appeals to those of us who feel powerless, or worry that we’ve squandered our power. The mid-life witch coming into her own strength and magic is an allegory many of us–at a time in our lives when we may feel used up and without value–wish to embrace in our escapist reading.

I find older protagonists more interesting as characters. They’ve lived, they’ve loved, they’ve lost. They have back stories that provide depth to their characterization. I also relate to them more than I can with a twenty-something who hasn’t necessarily faced some of the toughest curve balls life can throw at them. And I adore stories about women coming into their power–perhaps because I’m hoping one day I will fully do the same.

That’s probably why I’ve taken a short detour from my usual cozy mystery fare and returned to my paranormal roots to write Hexes, Lies, and Alibis. Categorizing it has been challenging. Witches and ghosts + a murder = paranormal cozy mystery. Angels, demons, and mythological beasts = cozy fantasy. But the fact that it takes place in a alternate reality makes it a portal fantasy.

Regardless of what genre it falls into, it features a middle-aged woman discovering both her legacy and her power after a lifetime of never fitting in, and ultimately, that was what made it so fun to write. Well, that and the harpies.

Hexes, Lies, and Alibis (The Myth Element Series) by M.K. Dean is now available for pre-order on your favorite platforms. Release date June 30, 2026.

Amazon and these retailers.

Why I hate stupid amateur sleuths

Posted on June 6, 2026 by McKenna Dean

A couple of months ago, I was in a group of writers discussing our stories, when I got one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received. Fellow mystery writer, Mindy Quigley, said, “What I like about your heroines is that they aren’t stupid.”

She went on to clarify. “It’s not that they don’t ever make bad decisions, but they weigh those choices and consider the consequences before acting on them.”

It was all I could do not to beam like a fool when she said that. You see, I hate the willfully stupid amateur sleuth. Now, by definition, we have to cut the amateur sleuth a lot of slack because she has no business doing what she’s doing in the first place. (I say “she” because the vast majority of the time the amateur sleuth is female) We know she isn’t supposed to be sneaking around buildings after hours, or poking through suspect’s desks and filing cabinets or questioning everyone in town. She doesn’t have the authority to be where she is, doing what she’s doing, and any evidence she gathers is tainted–which is probably why so often she must rely on forcing the killer to confess. We go along with this because we love the vicarious thrill of the investigation. We like solving puzzles, we like seeing justice done.

But what I can’t stand is when the female amateur sleuth is willfully stupid.

For starters, I need to have more motivation for her involvement than just being a Nosey Parker. Sure, in long-running series, it can be challenging to come up with strong reasons for our heroine sleuth to get herself involved… we can’t threaten every member in an extended family (I’m looking at you, Jessica Fletcher) without someone eventually calling us out on that. But once an amateur sleuth gets a few murders under her belt, I can see where members of her community might ask her to get involved because they trust her more than the police. That works for me.

But when the police actively tell the amateur sleuth to butt out, maybe it’s not a good idea for her to respond back by telling the law enforcement official that he stinks at murder investigations. Or that she thinks he may be in on whatever corruption is happening in the small town of Picturesque (population: varies depending on author’s needs). Even better, maybe she shouldn’t say those things when she is alone with said LEO and no one knows where she is.

On the same thought, maybe our amateur sleuth shouldn’t decide to confront a murder suspect by herself at some lonely destination that Doordash couldn’t find without GPS and a bloodhound. This just happened recently in a story I had really been loving up to that point, and I nearly chucked the book across the room when I came to this scene.

If an amateur sleuth makes bad decisions–and sometimes this is necessary to move the story along–at the very least, they need to show us they realize they aren’t making a smart choice. Spare me the heroine supremely confident in her own ability to bring a killer to justice who goes around telling the police they are such bumbling idiots they couldn’t find a box of doughnuts placed in the middle of their desk. Or the heroine who gets involved in solving the crime without any personal stake in the matter whatsoever. Or the heroine who is repeatedly told by law enforcement to stay out of the case but persists anyway because they know best.

I feel strongly about this, and yet also feel I’ve painted myself into a corner with the Ginny Reese Mysteries. If you’re a fan of the series, you’re well aware of the slow burn romance between Ginny and Joe Donegan, the local sheriff. Joe’s tolerance for Ginny’s interference has been tempered by the fact they are still attracted to each other, but as their relationship deepens, so does this gap between Ginny’s actions and Joe’s acceptance of them–both on a personal and professional level. At some point, Joe either has to turn a blind eye to her activities or actively collaborate with them. If not, her amateur sleuthing may eventually destroy their relationship. Believe me, I’ve thought about the different ways to solve this problem. But my point is, if Ginny persists in her amateur investigations, she does so knowing what she is risking: the case, her life, and her future relationship with Joe.

So yeah, a perfect heroine would be boring–and no cases would be solved. But the heroine who effectively says, “I’m so sure I’m right, I’m going to insult the only people who can lock up this criminal and instead go confront said killer alone with nothing but the power of my persuasive argument for back up… ” Yeah, I’m going to lose all respect for her.

You can give me all the pretty little cozy towns, the quirky characters, furry sidekicks, and love interests in the world, but if I don’t respect the main character, you’ve lost me as a reader.

Why I’m done with free ebooks…

Posted on May 24, 2026 by McKenna Dean

Who doesn’t love free books? First, let me clarify: I’m not talking about when your favorite author runs a limited freebie on a series starter. Snap those deals up! You know the kind I mean… when 30 or so authors band together to offer ebook deals if you sign up for their newsletter, or follow them on social media, or whatever. These freebies are often short reader magnets meant to introduce you to the series character or tease you into trying the series by offering a short prequel. There’s nothing wrong with this type of promotional story as a concept, or using a free story to garner followers.

The problem comes when the story, instead of making you interested in more from the author, has you adding their name to a ‘do not bother’ list. When 27 of the 30 downloads are so unreadable, you regret filling up your e-reader with them.

I’d argue that your reader magnet should be some of your best work, not something thrown together without the benefit of a single read-through, let alone an editor.

Maybe this is me being a Miss Crankypants after struggling to find anything worth reading this morning, but here is my list of things I would NOT do in your reader magnet:

Do not start your reader magnet with a flashback, only to jump to “12 hours earlier” on the next page. I get that you want to start off your (usually very short) story with a bang. But we have to care about Betty Bluebonnet as a person before we can care about why she almost got run over by a car.
Can we PLEASE stop describing every scent as some weird combination of x plus y? “The room smelled of regret and old gym socks.” “He awoke on a couch that was stuffed with stress and nutmeg.” Honestly, the phrasing reeks of AI and lavender. (Did you see what I did there?)
I KNOW this is a really short reader magnet. No, you will not have time for great detail or backstory. But it is imperative that you don’t, I don’t know, SKIP INTRODUCTIONS. How can your protagonist go from being unconscious to discussing missing ledgers with someone she’s never met before? How does she know the other guy’s name? How does she know about the ledgers (or account books, or lost keys, or whatever)? Did she absorb that information via osmosis while she was out like a light on the stress-filled couch?
Please for the love of God, don’t create a dramatic exit for a minor character in order to facilitate leaving the protagonist with a cat (or a dog) and then never explain why they don’t return for their furry friend. Telling us they are happy in their new petless life without explaining why they had to emergency relocate in the first place makes us wonder if they are in Witness Protection. Yes, I know this is a SHORT READER MAGNET and you don’t have time/space/energy for those pesky little details. Then don’t have the minor character leave under dramatic circumstances. If you need to save the word count for storytelling, eliminate the minor character altogether and skip straight to, “my cat, Murdermittens, whom I inherited when my friend Cindy Lu had to return to Whoville…” and move on.
Yes, I KNOW IT IS A SHORT STORY but perhaps having the protagonist uncovering the identity of the killer by annoying the heck out of all the other characters with blunt, none-of-your-business questioning until the killer feels obligated to take a crack at her isn’t sustainable sleuthing. And why do these suspects spill their guts to her instead of telling her to take a hike? “Why, yes, the dead guy DID force me to sell the family home when I couldn’t come up with the back taxes, not that it’s any of your business and why am I telling you this in the first place?”

I know I’m being super picky here. Hey, you don’t see me writing short stories! Even my novellas are almost novel length. There’s an art to writing short stories that I don’t possess. But seriously, take a hard look at your reader magnet and see if it is helping or hurting you.

I, for one, am no longer willing to waste time on these freebies.

All Good Art is Political

Posted on February 8, 2026 by McKenna Dean

The title of this blog post is a quote from Toni Morrison, “All good art is political. There is none that isn’t.” She goes on to point out that Shakespeare and Aeschylus wrote plays poking at kings, and that good art should be beautiful and political at the same time. That she wasn’t interested in art that wasn’t rooted in the world.

There is a meme going around on TikTok these days that starts by saying, “This is a dog account (or a horse account, or a gardening account, or a hiking account, insert the thing you love here) but also a political one because you can’t [do your favorite thing] if ICE shoots you in the face.”

(Yes, I do understand the irony of commenting on anything along these lines from a platform that is now state-run here in the US.)

Yesterday, I saw an Instagram post where a baker went on a tear because someone said she shouldn’t be political on her own account because her followers “weren’t there for that” and she was incandescent with rage that people assumed because she was into baking and cottage core that she was also into human rights violations and the acts of terrorism taking place in cities across the US right now. She stated unequivocally that she did not care if she lost followers because if that’s how people felt, she didn’t want those people following her in the first place.

And yet we’re frequently told as content creators, brand marketers, and artists looking to sell our work that being political is the LAST thing we should do. Usually by people who wish to see the status quo maintained and who do not feel at risk of losing any rights that matter to them.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Yesterday, I answered a #pretendpanel question on bluesky on whether I allowed politics to impact my writing.

The beginning of my threaded reply is screen shot here:

Yes. I began writing a story at the end of 2024 that was meant to be a fun little palette cleanser between Ginny Reese books, a paranormal cozy mystery in which the protagonist discovers her secret power is the ability to weaponize ice.

Now I don’t write directly about politics or world events. During lockdown in 2020, my family had to separate into two households: one with high-risk and/or WFH members and me by myself, an essential worker expected to show up every day unless I was actively sick. I don’t make “great art” by any means. I write stories that I like to think are intelligent, captivating escapism. Between 2020 and 2021, I wrote two books, neither of which mentioned Covid-19. Bishop’s Gambit is set in the 1950s, prior to covid. An Embarrassment of Itches (Ginny Reese Mysteries Book 1) was written at a time when the last thing I wanted to think about was the pandemic. Because Itches was a series starter, the lack of any mention of Covid has carried through the series.

But if you’ve read Itches (or any of my books for that matter), you know I write about female main characters coming into their strength and power with the support of their partners. Women who learn to stand up to bullies, to fight for what’s right. You’ll read “nevertheless, she persisted” worked into a paragraph, or find an explanation of why red lipstick became a statement against fascism (Hitler hated it). As for my heroes, you’re more likely to find cinnamon rolls than alpha males. Not pushovers by any means, but decent, kind men who don’t feel the need to degrade or humiliate the love of their lives.

So even if my stories aren’t political per se, they still reflect the things I believe in. Common decency, compassion, empathy.

There’s a line from A Nose for Death (Ginny Reese Mysteries Book 4) where Ginny tells the killer that empathy is not a character flaw. I stand by that 100%.

Which is why it almost physically hurts for me to write what was supposed to be a take on Frozen meets Practical Magic. The ice metaphor is baked into the story–I can’t give my main character, Morgan Frost, a different super power. The story is 90% complete. I can either bin it or make the story more meaningful.

I chose to make it more meaningful.

Yes, it’s still a lightweight paranormal cozy mystery, but I’m reworking certain elements. I’m taking back ice as a force for good in this story, and seeing that the powerful and corrupt get a satisfying comeuppance. I may not be able to make those changes in the real world, but I can make them in mine, and hopefully silly little stories like this one can help people get through a tough day by stepping outside their cares for a few hours. Maybe even give them hope.

This story hasn’t been released because it’s not ready yet. It’s not good enough. But when it is, there will be no doubt where I stand. Because it is more important to me to write a good story than it is to hit an arbitrary, self-imposed publishing deadline. It is more important to me to tell a good story than remain politically neutral in the hopes of not losing any followers. Because silence is a stance as well.

Today I made potato soup…

Posted on January 11, 2026 by McKenna Dean

Today, I made potato soup. It’s a favorite comfort food of mine, and the weather today was perfect for it. Earlier today, a snow squall blew up from nowhere, and for about 30 minutes, it looked like blizzard conditions outside my window.

But then the snow cleared, and the sky grew bright and cold. I chopped onions and thought about a woman a thousand miles away who won’t be sharing dinner with her family tonight. A woman who had just dropped her kid off to school, and with her dog in the backseat, was shot and killed by an ICE agent.

I thought about why she was killed. About the circumstances that set this action into motion. About the agent’s recorded words to her after he pulled the trigger. About how it wasn’t enough that she was turning away, about how he had to have the last word and he said it with violence and a gun.

I thought about how this woman is being vilified now to make her death more palatable to a base that was fine with death and inhumane treatment as long as it happened to the Other and not to them. Oh, she was married to another woman? Then that’s okay. She wasn’t one of us.

But she was one of us. As was the woman who was shot in her bed during a botched police raid, and the man shot at a traffic stop for telling the officer he had a registered firearm, or the man who said, “I can’t breathe” as the life was crushed out of him.

I chopped onions and and thought about so many people whose stories I don’t know because being a white woman I was raised on a different narrative. My thoughts were messy and chaotic because everything is messy and chaotic right now. It’s as though every bit of news is designed now to make you believe everything is hopeless and you’re going to die–public health and safety is crumbling, and our civil rights are eroding. The Constitution has been removed from the government website and our checks and balances are flagrantly ignored. Climate change statistics and historical documents are being scrubbed even as the White House has been gutted for a vanity project. Armed, masked men are kidnapping people off the streets and see nothing wrong with killing a protester.

The message is loud and clear. Stay home, or you’re next. Give up. We’ve won. We have no use for anything but “us” and our definition of “us” becomes more narrowly defined every day.

I confess there are days when this message works on me. When I make soup, and it isn’t the onions that make me cry. Then I look at my family, my friends, my community and I think, “You can’t make me give up on them.”

And so I make soup. Walk the dogs. Meet with my crit group and talk about writing projects. Read books that comfort me. Watch movies with my family. I also look around me and ask myself what is something I can do this week for someone else to make their lives better? Maybe it’s donating to a food pantry. Helping a friend financially or with my time. Maybe it’s reporting ICE agent Jonathan Ross’s gofundme for legal expenses because a) the government is paying them and b) raising money for a possible murder defense is against gofundme’s TOS. Perhaps I send some money to Second Harvest because Minnesota’s SNAP program funding has been cut off. I’ll take that money I would have spent on a streaming platform that has become another government mouthpiece and donate to a victim’s gofundme, or help a stranger online meet their rent or medical bills.

It’s not much. I know that. But it’s what I can do. Because all these little things are seeds of hope, and hope IS resistance too.

How I lost $45K as a writer by a simple misunderstanding

Posted on January 4, 2026 by McKenna Dean

Did that title get your attention? Because it certainly got mine.

Many of you may be aware of the historic 1.5 billion dollar settlement of copyright infringement claims in the Anthropic class action lawsuit. Anthropic essentially took books and articles from the pirate site, LibGen, to train their AI model. A LOT of books and articles. Fiction, non-fiction, scientific journals, you name it.

Library Genesis claims to be a shadow site offering “free” copies of all your favorite works, ie it’s a pirate site where thousands of documents and copyrighted works have been illegally made available. LibGen maintains it exists for the furthering of scientific information by making scholarly documents available for free.

Sure, Jan.

Earlier this year, it was announced that a settlement at been reached, and that authors whose work had been appropriated could apply for their share of the payout. I did the search: 15 of my titles (under 3 different pen names) had been used by Anthropic. According to the terms of the settlement, as an independent author, I was owed three thousand dollars for each book used to train Anthropic’s AI system. Traditionally published authors would receive the difference split 50-50 with their publishers.

15 books at $3K a pop comes to $45K in restitution.

But here’s the catch: all works had to be registered with the US copyright office in order to qualify. Now technically, the act of publishing something automatically confers copyright on your work. Copyright registration varies depending on the project but my works would have run about $45 per book.

And I didn’t do it. I believed what I was told, that the act of publishing my books alone were sufficient as copyright, and I didn’t need that additional step–or cost. Frankly, it was an error on my part as a newly independent author, but it turns out a lot of pretty famous writers discovered that their Big Name Publishers hadn’t registered their works either!

I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse. All I know is I am going to see if I can retroactively register my existing works now, and I will be paying that registration fee on everything moving forward from here on out.

I don’t even want to think about what a difference $45K would have made to my life right now. I’d have rather not had my books stolen to create AI slop in the first place.

A Nose For Death wins a BIBA!

Posted on November 30, 2025 by McKenna Dean

Remember when I posted a few weeks ago about A Nose for Death (Ginny Reese Mysteries Book 4) being shortlisted in the Mystery and Mayhem Awards? Well, in an different award contest, I just found out that this same book has won a Best Indie Book Award! You could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out. I really had no expectations going into this contest–I enter these things mostly for exposure and to get my books seen by more people. So to actually win an award was completely unexpected!

Then this morning, I discovered Nose was a finalist in the 2025 Best Thrillers Book Awards! I have to tell you, when you struggling to believe in your work, it’s lovely to get this kind of outside validation.

How do you think I should celebrate?

McKenna Dean Romance

M.K. Dean Mysteries