Kira Jane Buxton Books In Order

Publication Order of Hollow Kingdom Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Kira Jane Buxton

Author Kira Jane Buxton’s writing has appeared in The Rumpus, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, Huffington Post, NewYorker.com, and more.

Kira grew up in Indonesia and her first job was at a zoo when she was twelve years old. At first, it felt important and epic, but she became bored by the second day. She would hold a cobra, brush the hippo tongues with a broom, hand feed the rhino. It began her lifelong love of animals.

When she and her husband first moved to Seattle, she began having encounters with crows. Kira approached an injured crow and expected she would be dive bombed by his murder of at least forty. Instead they fell silent. She felt they knew she was there to help the bird. Unfortunately, the bird did not make it. Her interactions with the murder were very different. It gave her the influence to write about crows as well as the premise of people no longer being around it was just a single crow telling the story.

She was so terrified and excited by the challenge of it all that she wrote the first chapter in ecstatic frenzy. ST’s voice came through just as vulgar as a sailor and clear as a bell.

Quite a few of the characters in the book were total surprises to her. Angus the Highland Cow exploded right onto the page when she was trying to voice a hummingbird. Big Jim started out as a little boy (small Jim). She wanted to honor all of the species with her research and get all of the details right. It was important to her that each of the voices was authentic, something that took a combination of the research and listening to her intuition about how exactly a certain animal would express themselves in some way.

She penned the book because she felt like she had to, it was burning inside of her. Kira was committed to writing it as it was, without any problems of it getting on a bookstore shelf, or how she could pitch it to some publisher. She put the story first, at the risk of no one ever reading it. She loves literary prose and humor, and feels both should be featured in a novel. Merging different genres wound up being organic for her, a mixture of the elements of the fiction Kira loves the most.

When she talked to agents about the book, there was a lot of positive response from them on the premise of the novel. Despite their love for the book, many of the agents she talked to said that they were unsure of how they could sell it since they had never seen a novel like it.

Kira has always been drawn to humor, which is why it is featured so prominently in the novel. She finds humor is a beautiful antidote to how hard life is. ST’s irrepressible hope and bright voice is what Kira used for a guide while writing the book.

Her love of animals is the reason there are details about them in the book. She either wanted to consciously share them, or they just flowed nicely into the description or narrative due to how authentic they were to some character’s behavior and they fit in a given scene.

She has two wild crows, named T and Dart, that come to visit her on a daily basis and are some of her most important relationships. She modeled her character S.T. on T in part because she is pretty goofy. She will pop out and frighten Kira, and it is clear to her that the crow enjoys doing it. Dart, a regal male that is a bit aloof and leery of humans, who looks after T, warning her about the surrounding dangers. Anytime he comes close to Kira, she feels honored.

She is careful to feed these birds food that is good for them, but T has a liking for junk food and flies by and shows off the terrible snacks she has. The crows are incredibly smart.

They seem to know wherever she is in her house at any given time and will call to her if they want her to come outside. T has shuffled and flapped her wings in order to flush her out while sitting outside Kira’s writing room, finding the inordinate amount of time she spends sitting pretty boring. Sitting around with these crows gives her inspiration and sparks her ideas, and can lead to some great writing insights. They will, more importantly, they life up her spirits and put Kira in a playful mood, which will directly impact the energy of her writing.

Kira’s debut novel, called “Hollow Kingdom”, was released in the year 2019. Her work is from the genre of science fiction.

“Hollow Kingdom” is the first stand alone novel, which was released in the year 2019. S.T., a crow, has been domesticated. He is a bird of rather simple pleasures: trading some insults with the wild crows of Seattle (those idiots), spending time with Big Jim (his owner), and enjoying the best food that man has to offer, Cheetos. An eyeball falls right out of Big Jim’s head, and S. T. starts feeling that there is something wrong. His most tried and true remedies: slobbering affection of Dennis (dim-witted, yet loyal dog) to the beak-delivered beer does nothing to cure his owner.

S.T. has got little choice but to go out into a scary new world, and finds that the neighbors are eating one another. The local wildlife is buzzing about rumors of dangerous new predators roaming around Seattle. Humanity’s extinction has just arrived, and the sole creature determined to save it is this foul mouthed bird.

Readers loved ST and his humor. By the second page, readers starting laughing out loud and it kept up until the very end. ST’s love of humanity and hopefulness made him a more well rounded character. He makes the horrific scenery easier to stomach. This book is a thought-provoking, beautifully written, and unique novel that readers cannot recommend enough.