A Ramble (in the good sense)
This is a rambling blog post.
Rambling, as in walking, is good for you, so having a ramble around my thoughts feels like a perfectly acceptable place to start.
Good or otherwise, here it comes.
This Substack is my place to create community. At the moment, as far as I know, I have a community of one, me. That feels like permission to indulge my only reader with exactly what they want. For now, that means getting us up and running.
This piece is part welcome, part introduction, part thinking-out-loud. Future posts will be more focused. This one is me opening the door.
Newsletter Rhythm
This will become my first newsletter, though not everything here will be a newsletter. I plan to write one once a month, shall we say the last Wednesday of each month?
Each newsletter will be available here and also on my website, OhKayWords!.
Which brings us neatly to…
Who Am I?
That’s a good question.
I obviously know who I am, but for anyone joining me here, I’m actually a few people:
- KA Dempsey – crime and adventure fiction writer for adults
- Maggie Makepeace – adventure fiction writer for children
- Kreative Kay – learning and development professional who does the rest
By “the rest”, I mean things like:
- creativity as a human skill
- learning to work with AI (especially for writing and creative practice)
- non-fiction, newsletters, workshops, questioning, thinking
Let me linger with Kreative Kay for a moment.
Where Kreative Kay Came From
As a child and young adult, I was gently but firmly taught by well-meaning parents and by the education system that creativity was a bad idea.
To survive in the world, I needed to be sensible. I needed a proper job. I needed to become a drone (not the buzzing kind in the sky, more like the worker bee). Creativity, I was told, wouldn’t help with that.
My mother, bless her, did identify that I would make a good teacher, though she picked the wrong age group for me to thrive in.
I didn’t fully realise that creativity wasn’t just about writing stories until my early twenties, when I worked for someone called (Dame) Sue Campbell. She didn’t just allow creativity, she expected it. From me. From all of us that worked with her.
Before that, my joy in stories had often been punctured by a running commentary on how things weren’t real. Doctor Who, for example.
“I bet the cameraman had a right old laugh filming this.”
And just like that, the magic leaked out.
Sue helped me reclaim it.
My creativity was allowed out to play through designing learning programmes, working with people on their own dream projects, and discovering that creativity lives far beyond fiction. I learned a great deal during those years.
Eventually, I returned to my first love: reading and writing, but with a deeper understanding of what creativity actually is.
I’ve come to realise that my core purposes are:
Storytelling and Learning
And I have Creativity and Joy, literally tattooed on my arms.
Creativity brings me Freedom and Joy
Why This Matters Now
As I move into the last third of my life, my body lets me down more often than I’d like. I live with psoriatic arthritis, fibromyalgia, and a collection of mind-and-body complications that make life… interesting.
Because of that, creativity isn’t a luxury for me. It’s essential.
Being creative in how I live matters more now than it ever has.
It’s from all of this that Kreative Kay has emerged — and she’s arrived just in time to explore how we keep our humanity as we learn to live and work alongside this new technology we are currently calling AI.
What I’m Writing
At the moment, I have four writing projects underway.
As KA Dempsey
- The Mandrake Murders (working title): the first Kit Blackwell mystery
- The Protectors (working title): the first Mandrake Agency adventure
As Maggie Makepeace
- Pip and the Devonmouse Gold: already published on Kindle (and currently in Kindle Unlimited) but working on the paperback
- Pip and the Goblin Gan
Book Recommendations
Because books matter.
Fiction
- Blood Between Us — Lindsay Scott
- The Puppet Show — M.W. Craven
Non-Fiction
- Green Crime — Julie Shaw
Learning Corner (and a Little More About Me)
This section will, over time, share snippets from the learning tools and workshops I’m developing. For now, it feels right to explain why you might want to learn with me.
I’ve worked in learning, teaching, tutoring, and development for over 35 years.
I originally trained as a teacher (PE and English) for teenagers, many hundreds of years ago but quickly realised that while I loved teaching. The system wasn’t my happy place. The young people were wonderful; the structure they were forced into was not. That system, largely unchanged since Victorian factory days, is something I’ll return to when I start writing more about AI.
Instead, I moved into supporting coaches and coaching, building my own consultancy and working internationally. More recently, I paused much of that work to support a family paint manufacturing business, which has now closed, decisively, allowing me to return to writing, learning, and teaching.
Along the way, I’ve also:
- been a Learning & Development Manager at a Premier League football (soccer if you are in the US) club
- worked globally with FIBA (the International Basketball Federation), helping referee tutors learn how to teach and communicate more effectively
And now, here I am.
An Invitation
If any part of this resonates, the creativity, the stories, the questions, the rambling, the learning, you are very welcome to stay.
We’ll wander a little more deliberately next time.
