About KaLyn
Official Bio
KaLyn Cooper is a USA Today Bestselling author whose romances blend fact and fiction with blazing heat and heart-pounding suspense. Twenty-two years as a military wife has shown KaLyn the world, and thirty years in PR taught her that fact can be stranger than fiction. She leaves it up to the reader to separate truth from imagination. She, her husband, and their Alaskan Malamutes Little Bear and Tikaani, live in Tennessee on a micro-plantation filled with gardens, cattle, and chickens. When she’s not writing, she’s at the shooting range or on the river.
Proud Military Wife
I often get asked about my strong heroines. Many don't believe women like that exist but I know they do. I see one every time I look in the mirror. I talk to women like that every time I answer the phone and it's one of my best friends. We are military wives.
I have been married to Macho Marine for thirty-five years and together we’ve seen the world and the men and women who protect us from its evil on a daily basis.
Speaking of Macho Marine, he’s Alpha to the core and the Corps. Did you know that Alphas attract Alphas? Yepper. They sure do. I have several theories on this point and expound during blogs or when I speak to groups. Most of our long-time friends are Alphas and their wives are some of the strongest women I know. We have to be to put up with them, and keep them under control. It’s my theory that Alphas need a strong woman and that’s why in my stories you will never find weak, wimpy, needy women as heroines. I’m sorry, but I just can’t relate to them so I can’t write them into my characters. Mentally, viscerally strong women…that describes all my besties.
As a military wife, we have to be strong. We are the ones who paste on a reassuring smile and kiss our husbands goodbye, knowing it may be the last time we taste them on our lips, feel their strong arms around us, pulling us to them as we imprint their toned bodies into our memories. We verbally reassure them, and ourselves, that we can handle things at home alone and will keep the fires burning only for them.
We show Daddy’s picture to our children every night before bed and pray for him beside our children, begging God to keep him safe. When they ask “When will Daddy be home?” we can’t give them a date because we don’t know for sure and if we do know, can’t tell anyone for national security reasons. Then we call the plumber when the toddler flushes a plastic dinosaur down the toilet because she wants her Daddy, and Mommy just won’t do. Been there!
Military wives are so much like their husbands in their resilient fortitude; they do what they have to do to get the job done, because they are the only ones who can. When Daddy’s gone, no one else is going to take out the garbage, change the light bulb, see that the oil in the car is changed, and hold the crying toddler—or teenager—when the world seems like more than they can handle. Then they go to a cold bed and pray their beloved husband is safe. The next day they do it all over again, many while holding down full-time jobs, going to school and then there’s the volunteer work.
They bear the weight of their world alone and put on a supportive smile when he Skypes from half-way around the world. He doesn’t need to know the details of yesterday’s teen meltdown or that his buddy’s wife is cheating, just that his own wife has everything handled until he returns.
And when he does come home, she’s expected to step out of the roles of family Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Manager of the Human Relations Department as well as head cook and folding fairy, and turn the family reins back over to him…right after she morphs into tiger-wife and satisfies his needs in bed.
In my stories, the heroines are strong women, like the ones I know in real life. This is why I dedicate my books to military wives…as well as the women who actively serve our country, but they are a story for a different day.
