Kevin Linnell
Kevin sighed and said, “Do you know how much work it takes to self-publish a book? First you have to find someone who can edit it, then you have to find art for the book cover, and then you have find someone who is willing to print it and then on and on and then you have to market it and distribute it yourself.
“Let me tell you,” he stressed, “it takes a lot of work.”
He emphasized “A lot” stretching out the two vowels for about ten seconds until they were spaghetti thin.
Growing up in Grand Marais, Kevin, a fine high school athlete, said it would probably surprise his teachers to know that he has always been a writer. “I wasn’t much of a student, but I loved to write,” he said with a laugh.
In 2016, Kevin came out with “Tears of the Universe” a science fiction thriller he hopes to turn into a trilogy. “I have been told it would make a good movie,” he added, and I had to agree with him. It reads like a book made for a movie.
In 2018, Kevin published “The Greyland Experiment.” This story begins in Grand Marais, depicting a young man who comes up with a formula that heals the body ten times faster than anything else known to science. But like many things invented for good, someone is trying to use this creation as a weapon.
Two weeks ago, Kevin caught a break when an independent publisher picked up his latest tome, “Through the Crystal Cavern.” He signed a book deal with Between the Lines Publishing. The company told him they are interested in his first two books and a trove of unpublished manuscripts he has written over the last 40 plus years.
And boy have they been busy years.
Kevin grew up about 250 feet from me on 3rd street, 8th Avenue West in Grand Marais. He has two older siblings, a sister Terry and brother Rick, and a younger brother Kim. His father, Ozzy, worked at Erie Mining in Taconite Harbor and his mother, Donna was a stay at home mom.
As for Kevin, he was always a nice, happy go-lucky kid with a lot of energy who often wore a big mischievous smile. And yes, I’m stretching out the vowels in “a lot of energy” for about 20 seconds here, so it’s spider web thin.
Shortly after graduating from Cook County High School in 1977, Kevin moved to Colorado where he sold cars with his future brother-in-law for a year. When he grew tired of kicking tires, “We (he and his wife, Kristi) moved back to Grand Marais and I took a job at Hedstrom’s Lumber and I worked at the retail sales office for the next ten years,” he said.
Kevin also began a horse and carriage business that he operated in his free time in Grand Marais.
Those were productive years. He and Kristi were married in 1979 and began a family.
By the end of a decade at Hedstrom’s, he and Kristi had four children and Kevin was looking to expand his horizons, so he went to school in Alexandria, Minnesota to get his associate degree in aviation aeronautics.
He moved his horse and carriage business to Alexandria, “which helped me survive college. I ran that business in Alexandria for two years from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. four nights a week. I was also the vice president of the student council and on the college president’s economics council. Not that I wasn’t busy enough,” he said.
Three months before he completed his two-year degree, “three airline companies declared bankruptcy,” and once again he had to switch gears.
With no chance of finding a job in aviation, Kevin said, “I changed my major to computer voice networking and took 31 credits a quarter for the next year so I could finish my four year degree.”
After graduating college, Kevin was hired by Hoffman Engineering in Anoka, Minnesota, in the I.T. department.
“When I started, Hoffman had 60 computers and a mainframe. When I left five years later, they had 400 computers. I had to set up the workstations. It was a really busy job.”
Next, he worked at Ault Incorporated in Coon Rapids for “five or six years as an administrator. My job consisted of doing everything with computers, including setting up company shops in China and South Korea.”
When the company moved to Boston, he put in the computer stations at the new headquarters and then, “They laid off everybody in Minnesota,” he said.
Undeterred by the lay-off, Kevin took a job with Marco Inc. For the next five or six years he worked as a computer consultant for Marco. “I would drive to customers (in the metro area) all day long,” he said.
Today he is senior lab engineer for VERITAS Inc., which he describes as, “Probably the biggest software company you have never heard of.”
When asked about his writing, Kevin responded, “In the next couple of years I hope to be doing this full-time. I want to publish two books a year.”
Today Kevin’s four children, Kristopher, Jesse, Shaun, and Kodi Linnell Hartfiel, are adults and he and his wife are now grandparents. They own a home in the country and their property is adjacent to the Elk River.
A daughter gave him apple trees for Father’s Day and today he has 13 apple trees, three pear trees, three cherry trees, five grape vines and 10 hops vines planted in the backyard. “I want to plant a few more apple trees so I don’t have anything left to mow,” he said, a smile spreading across his face from his house to Grand Marais.
Now 61, Kevin works at least nine hours per day at VERITAS, yet he still carves out enough time to write five pages each day. “Well, that’s my goal,” he said. “I don’t always have the inspiration or energy to do that, but I attempt to write five pages each day when I sit down at my keyboard.”
Growing up in our neighborhood, one was lucky to get two TV channels on an often fuzzy TV screen, so it should come as no surprise that when we weren’t out playing, most of us were reading books. Kevin said he dove into the pages authored by “Edgar Rice Burroughs, David Edding, Anne McCaffrey and Brandon Sanderson.”
As for finding inspiration for his books, Kevin gleans ideas from friends and nature. “I always know how my books are going to start and how they are going to end, and a few salient points in the middle, but when I am into writing them, the characters and events often take on a life of their own. Sometimes I think, Where did that come from?”
“Any shops that would like to order my books or other books published by Between the Lines Publishing can order them from www.btwnthelines.com. My books will not be on their site or bookshelves for up to four months, because of the publishing schedule.” Kevin said.
Editor’s note: Growing up directly across the street from Kevin was Stacey Lola Drouillard. Stacey of course is an accomplished author, and her book “Walking the Old Road: A People’s History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe” is selling real well in bookstores.
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