STORKED! Adoption Secrecy and the Search for Identity was the winner in the BEST BOOK COVER/Non Fiction category of the 2023 IndieReader Discovery Awards, where undiscovered talent meets people with the power to make a difference.
Following find an interview with author KC Sanford.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
STORKED! Adoption Secrecy and the Search for Identity was published in June 2022.
What’s the book’s first line?
The message took me five minutes to write and five times as long to send.
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
K.C. Sanford’s STORKED!tells the emotional true story of a child born as Baby Girl, whose existence was erased by the closed adoption system. Through her quest to find her identity, Sanford sheds light on the legal barriers and emotional toll of closed adoptions and the importance of knowing one’s roots.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
STORKED!’s inspiration comes from my adoption journey and decades-long search to answer the question, “Who am I?”. Knowing who I was before I became K. C. Sanford is illegal. I am not allowed a copy of my original birth certificate, medical history, or genealogy. There is shame in secrecy, and I wanted to give a voice to the many adoptees who are denied access to their past.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
Her tenacity to never give up the search. To quote STORKED!, “Persistent. Stubborn. Determined. Driven. It was called many different things over my life—a trait passed to me by my birth father and one that I needed to find my way to him.”
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
Whether you are an adoptee, a birth parent, an adoptive parent, someone working in government or the courts, or simply someone interested in the complexities of the human experience, this book will challenge your assumptions and leave you with a deeper understanding of the power of identity, connection, and family. And if you like a mystery, STORKED! is a page-turner.
Did you design the cover yourself? If not, who did and how did you find them (they did another cover you admired, they were recommended, etc)?
Robin Locke Monda, who came highly recommended by a friend, designed the cover of STORKED!.
What, if any, elements of the book did you want to convey in the cover design?
The book’s cover symbolizes what the closed adoption system supposedly represented—the best solution to everyone’s problem: an unwed pregnant teen, a parentless baby, the infertile couple willing to parent a stranger’s child, and the sealing of all records so that everyone just moves on, always looking forward and never looking back.
If they made your book into a movie, who would you like to see play the main character(s)?
If a drama, Kate Winslet as K. C. If a comedy, Melissa McCarthy as K. C. For either version, Ewan McGregor as K. C.’s husband (Scottish accent included)
When did you first decide to become an author?
The seed of an idea was planted after hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2012. That book wasn’t ready to be written back then, but stay tuned…
Is this the first book you’ve written?
Yes (unless a 167-page dissertation about saving historic windows counts).
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
I managed to turn my love of historic buildings into a career as an architectural engineer.
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
Not enough! My writing ebbs and flows depending on what’s happening in my life. I find the more I read, the more I write.
What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?
Best—You are in the driver’s seat. Hardest—Hands down, marketing. Like many women, I’ve never been good at selling myself. So, thank you IndieReader for this opportunity!
Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?
Stephen King—I love a good scary story, and he is the master!
Which book do you wish you could have written?
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.