The Story of Me

About Kristine M. Smith



Take one shy third grader, introduce her to sentence structure and the art of storytelling then stand back. What happens next, and later, transforms lives and businesses.


By age eight, Kristine M. Smith was already a dyed-in-the-wool Roy Rogers fan. She watched every episode, begged her mother to buy every comic book.


At one point, exasperated by her daughter’s insistence (several times a week) to be sure to look for the next edition whenever she drove six miles to town, Kris’s mother told her, “They don’t make Roy Rogers comic books as fast as you want them. If you want more, you’re going to have to write them yourself.”


It was a revelation! “Sure enough, I could!” And she did!


Her grade school teacher was so impressed by her efforts that she read each story in class, embarrassing (and thrilling) the young author to her toes.


Extra credit—not a problem! Kris wrote. In fact, getting Kris to stop writing became an issue at home. She tore through chores like a tornado (with similar results) to get back to her pen and paper.


Her dad—never a reader—didn’t get it. He told her, “If you can’t build it or grow it, what good is it?”


He didn’t know that by the time Kris reached adulthood the Information Age and cable television would come along and that her “obsession” would, in an instant, become worth its weight in Ben Franklins. Neither did Kris. But she kept on plugging, kept on writing, because she couldn’t stop. Writing gave her the opportunity to say what she had to say. (Shyness kept her from speaking the words, so she wrote them.)


By junior high her English teacher was onboard. Kris’s family was farming, their income meager. When Kris's teacher told her she was a wonderful writer, Kris begged her, “Teach me how to be better!”


Her teacher replied, “I can’t; I’m not a writer. But I am a reader, and I know good writing when I see it.”


A few weeks later, the same teacher presented an issue of THE WRITER magazine to Kris; Kris’s name was on the white label. For the next two years, she devoured every issue, reading them from cover to cover…


By high school, Kris had reached what Malcolm Gladwell would deem (in his book The Tipping Point) “the threshold for excellence and expertise”: ten thousand hours of dedicated study and practice.


Actor DeForest Kelley flipped when Kris wrote an article about meeting him (her high school English teacher insisted that she send him a copy, much to her dismay). Kelley submitted her story to a well-regarded New York publisher. The editor wrote back saying she wanted to publish the piece in its entirety in their Christmas edition. (She didn't feel it was necessary to alter a single word.)


Needless to say, when Kelley wrote Kris to ask her permission to use the article, her parents had to peel her off the ceiling. To have her writing career officially launched by her favorite actor was light years beyond her wildest imagination.


During the next several decades Kris wrote freelance articles for MAINSTREAM, the official magazine of the company she served (The Animal Protection Institute of America) and newspaper, editorials, letters to the editor, and many other pieces. The income was meager (as befits a non-profit), the work not always literary—but by now she had all-but shed her shyness and began to write and offer presentations to grade and high schools and colleges about the many crises facing animals tame and wild in her capacity as Field Services Director of API.


Fast forward to reconnecting with actor DeForest Kelley in 1988; "De" and his wife Carolyn encouraged Kris to move from Tacoma, Washington to Hollywood. They felt sure she’d excel in Tinsel Town, first as an executive secretary and later as a screenwriter.


Problem: she was too good an executive secretary and too fearful of leaving the role to take a creative leap of faith…so she served as a secretary and eventually as a Hardware Lease Administrator at Warner Bros. Studios (Time-Warner) for eleven years before returning to Washington State in 2003.


But during her time in Hollywood, Kris kept writing. And when Mr. Kelley’s wife broke her leg just as he fell ill with cancer, “De” asked Kris to serve as his personal assistant and (eventually) as his caregiver until his death in 1999.


De also gave Kris his blessing to write a memoir about her long association with the Kelleys and so she did; in September 2001, DeForest Kelley: a Harvest of Memories debuted. It received no mass media coverage because Sept. 11 intervened; the country went into shock and “lockdown mode” for months: all available news sources were consumed by the horrific events of the day and its aftermath. And certainly Kris was in no shape emotionally to spearhead a book tour: she felt as kicked in the stomach by the events as everyone else did.


Five books have followed: Let No Day Dawn that the Animals Cannot Share (poetry and prose about the many animals, tame and captive wild, Kris has known) ; Floating Around Hollywood and Other Totally-True Tales of Triumph (a book of humor about being a “floating secretary” in Tinsel Town); The Enduring Legacy of DeForest Kelley: Actor, Healer, Friend (other fans’ reminiscences about the powerful effect Kelley had on their lives and careers); Purposeful Christianity; and Serval Son: Spots and Stripes Forever (a cautionary true story about what it’s like to own—and be owned by—a wild cat for seventeen years).


In January, 2007 Kris had the good fortune of being hired as a junior copywriter for an on-hold company. She fell in love with copywriting (which surprised her!), quickly wowing the group and earning Employee of the Quarter during the last two quarters she served the company.


In January, 2008 Kris established a copywriting business herself, quickly earning scores of kudos from delighted clients.


2012 is her fifth year as a full-time copywriter and editor.