Karen King Archives - Clare Rhoden

Today I’m chatting with Karen King, who started her writing career writing for Jackie magazine (a British magazine for teenage girls), and children’s comics such as Postman Pat and Winnie the Pooh. Karen is a multi-published author of children’s books and romantic fiction. She has published 120 children’s books, two young adult novels, five romantic novels and several short stories for women’s magazines. Karen signed up with Bookouture (the hottest digital publisher around) earlier this year for two romantic novels. The first one, Snowy Nights at the Lonely Hearts Hotel, will be available on 9 November.

LWOTW: Welcome, Karen, it’s great to have you here. Tell us, when did you write your first story?

Karen: I can’t remember. I’ve written stories ever since I was a child and had a poem published when I was about ten. My first published story was in Jackie magazine back in the early eighties.

A lifelong writer, then. What do you think of dreams, imagination, and planning?

I think ideas for stories come in many different ways and often a dream can be the catalyst then imagination takes it further and planning knocks it into shape.

A very neat summary. What’s the highlight of your writing career so far?

Being asked to open a library at a local school when I lived in Worcester and discovering that they’d actually written my name on a plaque on the wall. I was so touched and honoured.

That really is a highlight! What are you most busy with at the moment?

I had a two-book contract with Bookouture earlier this year and my first book, Snowy Nights at the Lonely Hearts Hotel, is out on 9^th November so I’ve been busy doing edits for it. I’ve also just finished writing the second book (I can’t divulge the title of that yet) so no doubt will have edits for that soon.

That’s a lovely sort of busy. If you could say one thing to aspiring writers, what would it be?

Don’t think too much when you are writing your story. Get the story out of your head and down onto the screen/paper. Then you can think what works and what doesn’t, what you can improve, tweak, rewrite. The story comes first.