Wednesday, July 29, 2009

bio

Karen had a dream job working as a public relations specialist for a major cosmetics company. She wrote press releases about the latest makeup and skin creams and took home so many free samples she didn’t even have time to try them all. When layoffs were threatened at the company, Karen knew she’d never be able to find another job she liked so much, and asked herself the question, “If I could do anything, what would it be?”

The answer was write a novel.

Although Karen had been writing professionally for over fifteen years as a marketing, advertising, public relations and technical writer, novel writing was a new challenge.

Tired of waiting to be laid off, Karen left her full-time job to learn the craft of writing fiction. Her former employer hired her as a freelance writer, and as word spread that Karen was available, other former employers started calling, launching Karen’s freelance business. Karen’s work has been published in the Montreal Gazette, and her flexible freelance schedule allows her to reserve time for novel writing.

When she’s not reading or writing, Karen is learning or trying something new. Karen majored in chemistry and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Liberal Arts and Science from the University of Illinois. She’s an advanced open water scuba diver, a triathlete, a kayaker and she’s summited (fixed typo) Mount Kilimanjaro. She enjoys winter camping, and even attended an afternoon meeting of her Canadian RWA chapter last February after waking up that morning in a tent pitched in the snow.

Karen enjoys reading a variety of fiction genres and is currently working on a romantic suspense story.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Summated Mt. K? While trying to picture that, I realized you may have somitted the i in the recently coined word, summited, and replaced it with an a. Which is it? If not an error can you provide a definition of summated. It was not in my Funk & Wagnalls. But then, neither was summited. Did you mean to say you smited Mt. K? Take that, you big balooka!

Karen said...

ahhh crap. Thanks for finding the typo! I hate that.

: )