For your enjoyment, I present an interview I conducted with Kristine of her thoughts on Star Trek and the writing of her book.
A Harvest of Memories

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Question 1:  For the benefit of those not familiar with your background, could you give us a glance at you and your Star Trek Fandom?

I became a fan of STAR TREK in 1966 when it first aired.  I met DeForest Kelley and Leonard Nimoy both in 1968.  I met DeForest again eighteen years later, during the 20th anniversary of TREK (1988)  and at that time we (the Kelleys and I) started a correspondence which ended up being a friendship after I moved to California in 1989 to begin working in the entertainment industry.  This is the shortest version of this story I have ever given! For a longer version (covering the beginning of our close friendship up until 1992 or thereabout), do a search on Dammit, Jim, He's My Hero or Just An Old Country Doctor (the late Mary Jensen's website) and a longer version can be found.

Question 2:  Your book, A Harvest of Memories, for me was a very moving journey. Was it a difficult book to write?

 It was difficult because it was emotional.  It was wonderful because  it helped me re-live every wonderful moment of the association just eight months after  I -- after we all --  lost De to cancer.  I needed to de-brief and to cry and to recapture all of the many hundreds of laughs the Kelleys and I had shared, so writing the book was "just what the doctor ordered" in that way.

Question 3:  Is there a favorite moment during your association with the Kelley's, you would  like to share with us?

They were all favorites.  Only by knowing the Kelleys could you understand the immense truth of this statement. That's how my book got to be so blasted long, you know!  And it was originally 745 pages long, so there's lots more where those memories came from.  De's biographer, Terry Lee Roux (her book on De comes out in about a month and is called FROM SAWDUST TO STARDUST -- you can pre-order it now at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com), told me I could write a complete second volume about all the funny, nutty things the Kelleys and I did to each other and that I could call is DE-Mented: Crazy About De.

Question 4:  You have also written  two other books, can you tell us a little bit about them?

Actually, I've written three other books.  You'll think I'm schozophrenic after reading all four -- they are as different from each other as night and day.  One is called LET NO DAY DAWN THAT THE ANIMALS CANNOT SHARE and is a book of prose-try about crises facing animals in the wilds and some humor and pathos and poignancy about my interactions with many different species, wild and domestic.  The third  is called FLOATING AROUND HOLLYWOOD AND OTHER TOTALLY-TRUE TALES OF TRIUMPH and is a book of humor about my adventures as a secretary in Tinsel Town.  The most recent tome is PURPOSEFUL CHRISTIANITY: Sharing the Verve and Value of the Prince of Peace. You can preview or order any of them at www.authorhouse.com.  Just click on Book Store and then type Kris Smith into the Author field, and all four books will pop up for you to take a peek at.  You can order them as e-books, which is just fine for the three most recent, smaller books, but I really advise you to order the hardbound of the Kelley book because it's too long to read on a computer and because anyone who gets the soft cover ends up getting the hardcover because they turn out loving it so much that they want a permanent copy that they can share.  Blush -- that's not a brag, per se --  check out the reviews at Amazon.com USA and let earlier readers sell you on the book.   I'm sure you'll believe them a lot faster than you'll believe the author herself! You might also want to get the De book as an e-book, because if you do all the photos that are in the book are in living color on-line -- they are only black and white in the bound copies. (You can also re-locate favorite passages in the e-book version by doing a search on a particular word or phrase, which is impossible in the bound versions -- the versions I call tree-books as opposed to e-books!)

Question 5:  What do you think of Star Trek in the modern era and in what direction would you like to see it go?

Oh, dear,  I don’t watch much television of any kind anymore, and have only rarely (and I mean almost never) seen any of the newer versions of TREK.  I'm pathetically ignorant of the new incarnations, so if you ever meet me at a convention and ask me  about the newer series, expect me to look like a deer caught in headlights!

Thank you Kristine for this interview , is there a message you would like to send out to fellow Star trek Fans in Australia?

Yes!  Thank you for keeping De alive and safe in your hearts and KEEP ON TREKKIN'!  The world is a better place when people focus on  positive, future-affirming things during these times of war, terrorism, tsunamis and other man-made and natural catastrophes.

I'm a long way away, but my arms are stretched across the oceans in friendship and affection!


Kris