Before going any further, I want to tell you about Keely. 

The dog, not the app. 

Sadly, she passed away on August 1, 2025. It’s been a long year without her. I wrote up a whole obit for her if you want to read more about her AMAZING story. 

Some days I wake up and feel like she’s still here. She was my “soul dog” and I know I’ll be missing her forever. 

When I started work on my dream serialization app, I did not have a name for it. It was just “the app” I was working on. I noodled on it and thought of plenty of writing-related names for it (“Serializr” was a fortunately short-lived option!). 

I have this scan of Keely’s portrait, commissioned for me by dear friend Gina Hogan Edwards, stickied to my computer desktop:

…and one day, while gazing at it, the thought came to me that I’d really like to commemorate her in some long lasting way. I’m not rich enough to found a fancy non-profit dog shelter or anything, but I was knee deep in getting “the app” up and running, and it hit me that I could name the app after her!

Honestly I resisted it at first. “Keely” doesn’t say anything about the app or what it does or who it is for, after all. But the more I thought about it, the more I warmed up to the idea. It is distinctive, and closely related to me, KimBoo. It is something I care about, almost as much as I cared about Keely. 

So that’s why it’s the Keely App and not some ridiculously corporatized, bland name. 

She was a great dog, and I hope this will be a great app in her honor. 

Still missing you, my baby tank potato boo bear!