Karen’s Bio

I was born in October 1949 in Fargo, North Dakota.  (No kidding.  People actually live there.)  I loved growing up in Fargo; it felt safe, comfortable, normal, though it’s frigid in the winter and mosquito-riddled in the summer.  With my parents, two sisters, a brother and a great golden retriever, I spent summers at our lake cabin just across the border in Minnesota.  I learned the strategy and techniques for catching walleyes and Northern pike, caught a lot of butterflies, and loved to water ski and swim, which eventually got me my first job as a lifeguard at a local pool.  When I realized the job was essentially babysitting in a bathing suit, it felt less glamorous, but it did pay the bills.

I left Fargo to attend the University of Washington in Seattle, where I spent 2 ½ years trying to figure out what I wanted to do.  I had five majors during that time, and spent my summers either back at that pool in Fargo or picking cherries outside Sunnyside, WA.  When, by the middle of my junior year I still didn’t know what to study, I dropped out and moved in with my high school sweetheart in a dorm at Princeton University.  We cooked in an electric frying pan and on a hotplate, and I got a great job working on social science experiments with a company called Mathematica, Inc.  We got married, moved back to Seattle, got divorced, and I returned to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis to finish my degree in English Literature. 

At school I met and married a young medical student, and when he finished his residency he took a job in Lead, South Dakota, working for a clinic owned by the Homestake Mining Company, the largest hard rock gold mining operation in the western hemisphere.  I learned about small town life there.  When I went to buy fabric for curtains in our rental house just after we moved to town and forgot my checkbook, the clerk smiled and patted me on the shoulder.  “That’s okay, dear,” she said.  “We know who you are.  Just bring in your check tomorrow.”  Hmmm.

Mostly because of me, that marriage went south, too.  Despite years of trying, I couldn’t conceive a child and finally I gave up.  Single again, I went back to school in Rapid City at the School of Mines.  I lived alone for a long time, and when I started talking back to Tom Brokaw when he said, “Goodnight” at the end of the TV news (“See you, Tom.  Have a good weekend”), I realized it was time to get back out there again.  The next fall I met Jeff in beginning physics class, and he eventually became my third husband.  This one took.  He is the third, but he’s also my final husband.  In 1991, Jeff graduated in mechanical engineering and I graduated in chemical engineering and chemistry, and we moved to Minneapolis/St. Paul.  I worked as an environmental engineer in the state’s largest oil refinery for eight years, then started a consulting company with another woman engineer.  I wrote the first draft of my novel, Unreasonable Risk, during that time by getting up at 5:30 every morning and writing foran hour before work. 

We moved back to Rapid City in 2002, and in addition to writing, since then I’ve been involved in lots of community organizations:  politics, community chorus, the photographic society, the Black Hills Writers Group, church choir, and several others.  This past year I worked with many others to pass a groundwater protection ordinance governing septic system installation and inspection, and have since been appointed to the county Planning Commission. Life is never dull.  

Best of all, we are now grandparents.  Our son and daughter-in-law have two girls, Annabelle and Ophelia, and our daughter and her husband have a girl, Hailee, and a boy, Dylan (named after the legendary Bob; the kids have taste).  We see them as often as we can and there are, of course, pictures of them on my home page. 

Since there are no kids in the house, we’ve adopted cats.  Rocky, who has toxoplasmosis (which blinded him), and Junior, cute but dumb as a post, have given us much joy and many laughs, despite the small carcasses of their prey lined up at the back door. 

Well, that’s about it. I’m about to turn 62 but still feel like 25. (You all know what I mean.) I’m president of the Black Hills Writers’ Group this year, and am enjoying that tenure, learning a lot in the process. My big news, though, is that my first novel, UNREASONABLE RISK (A Hannah Morrison Mystery), has just come out for e-reader, soon to be followed by the second in the series, THROUGH DARK SPACES, also as an e-book. My third novel, THE STILL HEART OF STONES, womenís fiction this time, is about four women who meet as a result of their infertility and become close friends. The first draft is nearly complete, so you may see that one in print or e-book one of these days, too. I’ll keep you posted!