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About Kym

I’m Kym Summers, a Colorado-based writer of upmarket suspense with speculative edges.

I’ve been inventing stories since grade school, usually by taking something perfectly ordinary and imagining the darkest possible explanation for it. A scrap of paper in the gutter became a love letter an old man had carried for decades, only to lose before he could deliver it. Every stranger on the street had a secret. An empty house that wasn’t truly empty. Even then, I was fascinated by the hidden part of people’s lives—and by what can happen when love, fear, and bad choices collide.

In 2023, after two decades in corporate marketing and leadership, I gave myself permission to step away and pursue a creative life. What began as a midlife gap year has become a new way of living with writing at the center. 

On submission: THE INCENTIVE

An upmarket dystopian suspense that asks the question:

“Why do we choose to have children?”

What happens when the government decides having a baby is not just a personal choice, but a patriotic duty? The Incentive is an adult speculative suspense novel about teenage girls offered life-changing rewards for becoming mothers—and the women who begin to question the system asking them to sacrifice their futures. 

More about me

In 2023, my decision to take a midlife gap year and pursue writing was featured on Good Morning America. It taught me to slow down, reconsider what success meant to me, and build a life with more room for creativity.

I have two teenagers, two dogs, two fish tanks, and an axolotl. 

Before turning seriously to fiction, I spent two decades working in marketing, communications, human resources, and leadership.

I was born in California, grew up in Nashville, and now live near Boulder, Colorado.

Follow along with my writing, reading, and hopeful publishing adventures:

I’m drawn to books with complicated women, unsettling questions, and huge emotional stakes.

  • Chain-Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 
  • Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin
  • Dear Edward by Anne Napolitano
  • Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister
  • The Secret Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
  • The Thursday Murder Club series by Richard Osman
  • American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
  • 11/22/63 by Stephen King
  • Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Contact Kym