Doctor by Day / Novelist by Night
Darin Kennedy is a board certified family physician, a graduate of Wake Forest University, both undergraduate and medical school, in his hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He completed his residency right at the turn of the century after three years at Carilion Health System in lovely Roanoke, Virginia and went on to serve eight years in the United States Army as an Army Doctor, Flight Surgeon, Family Physician, Residency Faculty, and got to spend most of 2003 and early 2004 in sunny Iraq. It is there he accomplished his other lifelong dream, to become a storyteller, writer, novelist.
In the nearly two decades since his deployment to Operation Iraqi Freedom where he cut his teeth on his first book, Pawn's Gambit, banging out words on the dentist's Panasonic Toughbook in between using the laptop to shoot dental x-rays and soldiers using the computer to email home as Internet cafes were not yet a thing that early in the war, he has written and published seven novels - two trilogies and a standalone young adult novel - along with numerous short stories across several magazines and anthologies.
The Pawn Stratagem, the series that Darin had been working on in the back of his mind since he was a teenager and the tale that started him down the writer's path in the first place, includes Pawn's Gambit, Queen's Peril, and Kings Crisis. This trilogy, finally complete, brings together his lifelong interest in the game of chess and a childhood spent reading comic books, many of those characters now gracing the silver screen on a regular basis and making billions, a fact Darin still can't quite wrap his head around.
His Fugue & Fable series, comprised of The Mussorgsky Riddle, The Stravinsky Intrigue, and The Tchaikovsky Finale, is set in his current home of Charlotte, NC and combines his loves of Russian classical music, world mythology, and tales of psychic phenomena. The first book a love letter to Mussorgsky's magnum opus, Pictures at an Exhibition, as well as Rimsky-Korsakov's masterpiece, Scheherazade, Darin followed up with two more that take us through Stravinsky's The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring with a brief trip to Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain only to finish up with a tour de force through Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and The Sleeping Beauty with brief wanderings through Prokofiev's Peter & the Wolf and Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead before bringing the whole thing full circle with a return to Mussorgsky and a cannon-filled finish with the 1812 Overture. Yes, Darin likes his classical music.
Carol, his lone young adult novel, is the product of a 3 a.m. dream/nightmare in 2013 and is modern day retelling of Dickens' A Christmas Carol with a teenage female protagonist and a 21st century sensibility. Darin bills this one as Scrooge meets Mean Girls.
Necromancer for Hire is the first book in The April Sullivan Chronicles, a compilation of short stories starring the titular necromancer. A second volume hopefully is right around the corner, as Darin has already written a few more April stories in between the various novels, but like the character herself, these stories can be a bit elusive and the second volume will be ready when it is ready.
A moderately full catalog of fantasy, science-fiction, horror, and steampunk short stories published anywhere from small press anthologies to Chess Life Magazine round out Darin's fictional escapades so far.
Most recently, Darin has started a new series, something that looks to be much longer than anything he has published before. The first draft of Book I is complete and he is a good ways into Book II. He hopes to have the first book out and available before too long, but as this is the first time in a long time he is starting something rather than finishing something, he honestly is just enjoying getting back in the saddle and making words at the moment.
Enjoy the website, look around, and drop Darin a message if you have a minute. He plans to be writing for many years to come and any encouragement is always welcome. His Checkered Ramblings blog has been neglected for a few years in favor of the various social media (along with the day job, eating, sleeping, etc.) but he may resurrect that at some point if the need arises.
And now, two sentences/five little words that have been on Darin's homepage since 2009 when Apple's iWeb was still a thing: some words of encouragement from one of his favorite movies that have helped keep him going and led to him finding the occasional island of Yes after months and even years sometimes adrift in an ocean of No.
Never give up. Never surrender.