Echoes from
the Shadows

Your Name

Kendall Kirkbride

Pseudonym

None. I publish under my own name. (Although I played around with the idea of writing my memoir – which has really been more of a WordPress side project – under the pseudonym Maddison Penrose.)

Genre(s) of your work

Psychological suspense, crime thriller, gothic mystery, horror, dark fantasy, and dark “romantasy.”

Titles/Year of Published Work(s)

The Quiet Between Us — Sept. 3, 2026

When Gods Wake — Sept. 11, 2026

Upcoming: Where the Missing Go — tentatively planned for November 2026

Bio

Kendall Kirkbride is an Ohio-based author whose work moves through psychological suspense, crime thriller, gothic mystery, horror, and dark romantasy.

Outside of writing, she is a licensed chemical dependency counselor working as a primary therapist in substance-use treatment. She earned her undergraduate degree in criminal justice and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling with concentrations in addiction and forensic counseling, while preparing for future doctoral study in forensic psychology.

Her debut novel, The Quiet Between Us, begins the Elliott Mercer series, while When Gods Wake opens The Dead Gods, a planned five-book dark romantasy series.

Her stories tend to live in the uncomfortable spaces between what people know, what they remember, what they are willing to admit, and what they would rather leave buried.

Why do you write in the genre that you do?

Apparently, I am incapable of writing about emotionally well-adjusted people having a perfectly normal Tuesday.

More seriously, I have always been fascinated by the things people hide—from each other, from themselves, and sometimes from entire communities. Psychological suspense gives me room to explore memory, grief, obsession, secrecy, trauma, and all of the ways our perception of the truth can become distorted.

Fantasy gives me many of those same opportunities on a much larger canvas. I can take questions about power, belief, morality, history, love, grief, and identity and build an entire mythology around them.

On the surface, The Quiet Between Us and When Gods Wake are extremely different books. At their core, though, both are asking versions of the same question: What happens when something everyone has accepted as truth turns out not to be true at all?

That seems to be where my brain likes to live.

How has writing changed/altered your life?

In more ways than I expected.

For a long time, writing was simply something I loved and something that belonged to me. Publishing changed that. Suddenly these characters and worlds that had existed privately in my head could belong, in some small way, to other people too.

It has also forced me enormously outside of my comfort zone. Writing a book is strangely private. Publishing one is the exact opposite. You have to let people read it, judge it, review it, talk about it, and sometimes completely misunderstand it—and then somehow continue writing anyway.

I am still very early in my publishing career, but I think writing has made me braver. It has also reminded me how much I genuinely love storytelling, even when everything surrounding the actual writing—formatting, marketing, algorithms, emails, and trying to figure out what on earth I’m doing—is considerably less romantic.

Who are your favorite authors and why?

I am terrible at choosing favorite authors because what I want from a book changes constantly depending on what mood I am in.

The writers I tend to love most are the ones who can create atmosphere so effectively that the setting almost becomes another character, who are willing to let their characters be complicated and occasionally deeply flawed, and who trust readers enough not to explain every single thing to them.

I love books that leave me thinking about them after I’ve finished them. Give me morally complicated people, secrets, mythology, unreliable memories, buried histories, impossible choices, or a mystery that makes me question what I thought I understood, and I’m probably interested.

My bookshelves are consequently a little chaotic.

Do you believe that audiobooks are the wave of the future, more of a passing fad, or somewhere in between and why?

Definitely not a passing fad.

I don’t think audiobooks are going to replace physical books or ebooks, but I do think they have permanently changed how people are able to fit reading into their lives.

People listen while driving, working, exercising, cleaning, traveling, or doing a hundred other things that make physically sitting down with a book impossible. They also make books more accessible for many readers.

I think the future is less about one format replacing another and more about readers expecting stories to be available in whichever format works best for them.

I would absolutely love to eventually have audiobook editions of my own work.

What have you found to be a good marketing tool? A bad one?

I am still very much figuring this one out.

So far, social media has been my primary sales and marketing tool (granted, I only published my first novel 12 days ago). I have found that posts where I am actually talking to people—sharing something about the writing process, celebrating something exciting, laughing about something that went wrong, showing the physical book, or explaining why a story matters to me—feel much more effective than repeatedly saying, “Here is my book. Please buy it.”

People want to connect with people, not advertisements.

I am only now beginning to branch into reviewer outreach, bookstores, libraries, podcasts, author networking, and potential in-person events, so I am very interested to see what happens as that part grows.

As for bad marketing, I think anything that starts making every interaction feel transactional is probably a mistake. I never want someone to feel as though I only interacted with them because I wanted them to buy my book.

Do you believe writing should be censored – that some topics should remain taboo?

Generally, no.

I think fiction needs room to explore difficult, uncomfortable, frightening, ugly, and morally complicated subjects. Writing about something is not the same thing as endorsing it, and sometimes fiction is one of the safest places we have to examine subjects that are extremely difficult to discuss elsewhere.

That doesn’t mean writers are immune from criticism, and it certainly doesn’t mean every treatment of every subject is automatically thoughtful or responsible.

But I am much more comfortable giving readers information and allowing them to decide what they want to engage with than deciding certain subjects simply shouldn’t be written about.

What is your opinion of Trigger Warnings?

I support them.

To me, a trigger or content warning isn’t censorship and it isn’t telling someone that they shouldn’t read a book. It’s information.

Readers come to stories carrying their own experiences, and I don’t lose anything by giving someone enough information to decide whether a particular book is right for them—or whether today is the right day for them to read it.

Especially because I write darker fiction, I would rather someone make an informed choice than unexpectedly encounter material they weren’t prepared for.

A content warning tells you what may be inside the book. It doesn’t tell you what you are allowed to read.

Do you find that you sell better in person (at events) or through social media (like a personal blog, website, or Amazon)?

I honestly can’t compare the two yet!

So far, my sales have come through social media and online visibility because I haven’t begun doing in-person author events yet.

That is something I am actively working to change. I’m beginning to reach out to bookstores, libraries, reviewers, podcasts, and other members of the book community, and I would absolutely love to start doing signings, author discussions, festivals, and other events.

So ask me this question again after I’ve had the opportunity to embarrass myself at a book table somewhere.

For now, social media wins by default—but I am very open to trying whatever helps my books find the readers who might genuinely enjoy them.

Where can people find you and your work?

The easiest place to find everything is my author website:

https://kendallkirkbride.com

There you can find information about my published books, upcoming work, purchase links, information about me, and ways to get in touch.

My currently published books, The Quiet Between Us and When Gods Wake, are available through Amazon, and I’m also on Goodreads.

Readers can also follow along through my social media accounts, where I share book news, writing updates, behind-the-scenes glimpses of whatever fictional disaster I’m currently creating, and updates on future releases.

Website: https://kendallkirkbride.com

Goodreads: Kendall Kirkbride

Amazon: Purchase links are available through my website

Email: hello@kendallkirkbride.com

My next planned release is Where the Missing Go, the second book in the Elliott Mercer series, which is tentatively scheduled for November 2026.

And, because apparently two fictional universes were not enough to keep me occupied, I am also continuing work on the remaining books in The Dead Gods series.