Welcome to my new and definitely improved website. And no, I’m not bragging when I call it “improved” because for the first time, I have hired professionals to create the design and program the site. So I can take no credit whatsoever for any improvements.

This site combines the information from three different websites – the K.D. Hays site, the Toto’s Tale site and the old Kate Dolan site. All three addresses will bring you here.

All of my “Living History” and “Life Beyond the Lunchboxes” columns are still here also, now moved onto the Blog page. My 18th Century Maryland Page information is here, too, on the Resources page.

New posts on the combined website will feature information about history, writing and dogs–all with kids involved. I can’t guarantee how often I will post and that’s due to the “kids involved” part of the equation. It is, after all, more important to find frozen hot wings for my son’s Monday Night Football party than it is to work on the marketing plan for the new book. And it’s more important to attend a coaches meeting for my daughter’s jump rope team than to finish a chapter in a story I’ve been working on for three years.

Really, it is. My son will be off to college in less than four years. But well before that, he will decide that there’s no way he’s inviting friends to his own house where his own embarrassing sorry-excuse-for-parents live. My daughter will eventually trade in a hobby that I can sort-of help with to one which I will be no help at all. (Heaven help us if the high school offers a bungee jumping team) So I need to take advantage of the opportunities, mundane as they are, to be a part of my kids’ lives. (more…)