Karen A. Wyle was
born a Connecticut Yankee. Her father
was an engineer, and usually mobile for that era: she moved every few years throughout her
childhood and adolescence. After college
in California, law school in Massachusetts, and a mercifully short stint in a
large San Francisco law firm, she moved to Los Angeles, where she met her
now-husband, who hates L.A. They
eventually settled in Bloomington, Indiana, home of Indiana University. She now considers herself a Hoosier.
Karen's childhood
ambition was to be the youngest ever published novelist. While writing her first novel at age 10, she
was mortified to learn that some British upstart had beaten her to the goal at
age 9. She finished that novel
nonetheless, attempted another at age 14, and then shifted to poetry. She made a few attempts at short stories in
college, and then retired from creative writing until starting a family in her
mid-30's inspired her to start writing picture book manuscripts. She produced startlingly creative children,
the elder of whom wrote her own first novel in 2009, at age 18, with the help
of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).
Intrigued, Karen decided to try NaNo in 2010. She completed a very, very rough rough draft
of her science fiction novel Twin-Bred
and spent the next ten months editing it.
She is self-publishing Twin-Bred
with a rollout date of October 15, 2011 -- her older daughter's birthday.
Karen's principal
education in writing has been reading.
She has been a voracious and compulsive reader as long as she can
remember. Do not strand this woman on a
plane without reading matter! Karen was
an English and American Literature major at Stanford University, which suited
her, although she has in recent years developed some doubts about whether
studying literature is, for most people, a good preparation for enjoying
it. Her most useful preparation for
writing novels, besides reading them, has been the practice of appellate law --
in other words, writing large quantities of persuasive prose, on deadline, year
after year. Whereas in college, a 3-page
paper would require hours of pacing the dormitory hallway and pounding her head
on its walls, she is now able to sit down and turn out words with minimal
angst. She has one professional writing
credit, an article published in the Indiana Law Journal Supplement and, with
minor modifications, in the monthly magazine of the Indiana State Bar
Association. This article was a
"third place recipient" of the Harrison Legal Writing Award. Whatever that means, it comes with money, a
plaque, and a free lunch.
Karen has
completed a rough draft of a second novel, tentatively titled Reflections, which is general
fiction. It has two alternative elevator
pitches: "Death is what you make
it" and "Do you need courage in
heaven?" She hopes to start the
sequel to Twin-Bred later this fall.
Karen's voice is
the product of almost five decades of reading both literary and genre
fiction. It is no doubt also influenced,
although she hopes not fatally tainted, by her years of law practice. Her personal history has led her to focus on
often-intertwined themes of family, communication, the impossibility of
controlling events, and the persistence of unfinished business.
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