Hi! I’m MP Kollman.

I grew up on a dairy farm in central Minnesota—seven miles from the small town where we did most of our grocery shopping, banking and sent our milk and seven miles in the opposite direction from the equally small town where we went to school and church. Two miles from other kids my age. My siblings were five, four, and three years older with, first, going to school before me, and later, farm chores to tend to. So I was pretty much a loner.

One of my earliest memories is sitting on the floor in my parent’s bedroom as Mom sewed. I was four or five at the time. She had a metal box full of old buttons. Y’know, the gawdy buttons from the turn of the century? I spent hours stringing those buttons on an old shoelace. While this probably sounds like a mindless activity, for me, it was not. I remember making up stories about the buttons, about the people who wore them.    

I began writing in grade school. The characters I created became my friends, whisking me away into precarious and exciting situations.

For several years after high school, life took me on a different path. A life that took me away from my passion for the written word.

A life that included a move to Wisconsin, marrying and raising two children.

One day, I was sitting on our deck watching the kids when suddenly three people joined me. Evidently brought their own chairs. I recognized them immediately as characters I had created in high school. They—like me—had changed in the years since high school: the brothers were now 28; had jobs; were settled into their lives; the girl, whose name had changed from Jennifer to Samantha, had just graduated from college with no solid plan for her future.

Over the next ten years, as they updated me on their lives to that point, together we outlined nine plots which became the Brothers’ seven-book series of crime/adventure stories which span 17 years. They remained with me for around 20 years as we fleshed out the entire series. They rarely come for a visit these days. And I must admit, I miss them.

First of all, you need to consider the time that this occurred. The late 80s & early 90s. At that time, the way to get a book published was to mail a manuscript to a publisher, wait for it to come back (or, maybe be accepted) and then send it to the next publisher on the list. But of course, I faced that catch-22: you can’t get published without an agent and you can’t get an agent unless you’re already published.

So, with my husband’s blessing, I self-published. However, at the end of my year-long contract with the publisher, the UPS driver dropped off all of the unpurchased books—close to 1,000 books. I’m still working my way through all those boxes.

Daunting.

Also discouraging. What could I do with the other books I was writing?

Writer’s Digest Magazine is a great reference for all things writing. Through them, I found Outskirts Press. They can be pricey, but they offer so many services for marketing, the author can pick and choose what fits their goals, their purse, or their personality.

Our children are now grown and we have three grandchildren. Having recently retired from a full-time job, I’m now able to spend more time in pursuit of a writing career.

Brothers, the first in the series, was published in 1995; #2, Sequela in 2012; both #3 and #4, Honeymoon and Moirai were published in 2021; and both # 5, The Accident and #6, Promises were published in 2022. In 2023, I published #7, Generations. An unrelated romance, Skin Deep was published in 2016. A second unrelated romance Second Chance, was published in 2026. A ninth book is percolating.

Link to my homepages @ Amazon or Outskirts Press.

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