A WARM THANK YOU

Lakewood Early Childhood PTA would like to thank these wonderful companies and individuals for making the 37 th Annual Lakewood Home Festival a huge success!

Almcoe Refrigeration

Baby Bliss / Mini Me

BeardSKI

Bella Vista Company

Bulleit Whiskey

Chicago Title Insurance Company

Ciroc

Coldwell Banker Lakewood

Cornerstone Mortgage

Cupcake Vineyards

D Home Magazine

Dave Perry-Miller & Associates

David Bush Realtors

Don Julio

Ebby Lakewood

Forest Lane Pediatrics

Incarnation Academy

Jacksonsells.com

Juliette Fowler Communities

Kovar Homes, LLC

Lakehouse Bar & Grill

Lakewood Brewing Company

Lakewood Veterinary Center

Maestri, LLC Architecture-Design

Mast Sturgeon Group

Minnette Murray Properties

Nancy Johnson Real Estate Group

Nothing Bundt Cakes

One Fine Day

Potbelly

Republic Title

StudiOrange

Susan Melnick

Team Whiteside

The Dallas Morning News

The Wine Therapist

Times Ten Cellars

Walnut Hill Obstetrics & Gynecology

White Rock Lake Weekly

Whole Foods

And the gracious homeowners, home captains, market vendors, cafe vendors, auction donors, orists, volunteer coordinators, and the hundreds of volunteers who make this event possible.

Q&A: Kathleen Kent

Kathleen Kent, the author of New York Times best-seller “The Heretic’s Daughter,” moved to East Dallas in 2000 after 20 years of living in New York, where she worked in finance. She recently finished her third book, “The Outcasts,” which is set in Texas in the 1870s.

How did you start writing?

I lived in New York for 20 years, working in finance — had nothing to do with writing. I went there after college to work. I was a history major at the University of Texas in Austin. I wanted to be a writer, but I had ‘that talk’ with my dad. He said, ‘That’s good, but how are you going to make a living? You know, you could always write on the side.’ So after college I went to New York and worked for 10 years with commodity exchange and 10 years as a contractor for the department of defense. So for those 20 years, I was working in a commercial field and just writing on the side. And then I was approaching 50, and I thought, ‘You know, if I don’t take the opportunity to try it now, it’s going to pass me by, it’ll never happen, and I’ll really regret it.’ So we moved to Dallas in 2000, and that’s when I started writing the first book [‘The Heretic’s Daughter’], and it took off.

I wantedtowrite‘TheHeretic’s Daughter’ for a long time because they were family stories that I had grown up with. I decided if I ever had the opportunity to really write, that would be my first project. So when we moved here, I just quit my job and started working on it. It took me about five years to do it because I was learning a craft. Plus, I had to do a lot of research, and my son was in school, so there were a lot of interruptions.

So your first two books are placed in 17th-century New England. Why did you deviate from that setting with the third book?

After spending seven or eight years researching and writing about that, I really wanted to write about something different. When it came time to write the third book, I thought, ‘OK, I grew up in Texas. I’m a Texan. I grew up with Texas myths and legends. I live here. I was influenced by Western-themed authors like J. Frank Dobie and Louis L’Amour and,later,CormacMcCarthy.Those were the writers that I think really influenced me.’ So I had this sort of ‘eureka’ moment that that was what I wanted to do. It just made sense for me, and I’ve been really thrilled with how it’s been received.

How’s that?

Upuntilnow,mostofmyreadership has been women, but what’s great is with this book most of the reviews have been from male reviewers. It’s really satisfying, because I wasn’t thinking I was writing for a female or a male audience. It just so happened that I had some really strong female characters inthefirsttwobooks,anditwould make sense that women would read it and related to that. But it is satisfying knowing that I have a growing male readership, and that they get involved in the plot.

How did you come up with the idea for the book?

Itwasactuallythroughmybrother, who’sanamateurhistorianandCivil War buff. I was talking with him about wanting to do something with Texas his-