Karen Kiess

I'm a dedicated reader and alternate between paperbacks and Kindle downloads.  I must confess I've gotten hooked on the vintage stuff that Amazon offers for free-I've recently come across a collection of humorous ghost stories from the early 20th century and was amazed that one of them is pretty much the plot of the first Ghostbusters movie-what a hoot!  I'm hooked on British contemporary romances and American mysteries, cozy and otherwise.  I love a flawed character and work to develop that extra dimension in my stories.  

I'm a native Minnesotan and that's where my stories are based-I take the sensible approach and write about what I know.  One of my obstacles is ensuring I'm driving the plot in each chapter.  To be honest, my writing style is pretty much just start typing and come up for air once in a while.  I am working on using outlines to stay more disciplined but to be honest it's not as much fun and certainly not as spontaneous.  Anyway, my books really come to life in the rewriting, and I pretty much rewrite until I just get bucky and say that is enough!

My favorite advice from another writer was to set your work aside for six months, then take another look at it.  I've been surprised more than once at picking up on one of my set-aside books and thinking yech!  And so another round of rewriting....

I've been writing for fun for a few years and have three novellas available on Amazon for Kindle-my "Jane" stories Volumes 1-3 called the Mischief Maker series-funny and just a little bit mean... Yes, Jane is a flawed but entertaining character (IMHO)  I've been developing my writing style with a cast of characters I've grown to know well, and am moving on for the moment to YA with a novel for which I'm currently seeking representation, and a new one in the works.  ...and a half-finished one I need to take a look at one of these days-yikes~