KAREN C. WHALEN – Paralegal – Award Winning Author

Karen C. Whalen is the author of two mystery series for The Wild Rose Press: the Dinner Club Mysteries featuring Jane Marsh, an empty nester who hosts a gourmet dinner club, and the Tow Truck Mysteries starring Delaney Moran, a super feminine shoe-a-holic who drives a tow truck. Both are cozy mysteries about strong friendships and family ties set in Colorado. The first book in the Dinner Club series tied for First Place in the Suspense Novel category of the 2017 IDA Contest sponsored by Oklahoma Romance Writers of America.

Whalen worked for many years as a paralegal at a law firm in Denver, Colorado, and was a columnist and regular contributor to The National Paralegal Reporter magazine. Whalen loves to host dinner clubs, entertain friends, ride bicycles, hike in the mountains, and read cozy murder mysteries.

Toes on the Dash – Shoe-a-holic Delaney Morran inherits a tow truck business from her absent dad. The dead body of her ex-boyfriend is discovered in the trunk of her first towed vehicle. She must solve the crime and toughen up to make the business a success and feel the father-daughter connection she seeks.

Many authors count among my favorites, but three stand out the most. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and Erma Bombeck.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about her life as a homesteader’s daughter and wife during the years 1870 through 1890. I started reading Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s A Gift from the Sea, published over fifty years ago. Then I read through her five volumes of diaries and letters covering 1922 through 1944. Erma Bombeck wrote a newspaper column and humorous books about her life between 1965 and 1996. There are four things these writers have in common, which are also the reasons they are my favorites: they wrote about a very specific time period, they wrote about their own lives, they wrote with a strong sense of place (Laura the prairie, Anne the ocean, and Erma the suburbs) and they were talented women writers.

Lucky for them, they lived in exciting times and places. Also, they had interesting lives and a whole bunch of talent.

Erma Bombeck is the only one of the three whose life span overlapped with mine. I sent her a letter right before she died and she wrote me back. I keep that letter on my desk and look at it every day.

These women writers inspired me to write. First, I wrote a column for a paralegal magazine (paralegal being my original career). Erma Bombeck also wrote a column, and I’m proud to be remembered as a columnist, too. When I progressed to writing novels, I set my books in Colorado, an evocative western setting. My books are not memoirs, however; they are murder mysteries. My tow truck mystery series is a mash up of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels and Gemma Halliday’s High Heel Mysteries. So, all right, Janet Evanovich and Gemma Halliday are my favorite authors, too.

I will be forever thankful to the woman writers who have gone before me and inspired me. Because of them, I was able to achieve my own dream of becoming a published author. As Laura Ingalls Wilder is quoted as saying, “No one has ever achieved anything from the smallest to the greatest unless the dream was dreamed first.”

Thank you, Laura, Anne, and Erma, for daring to dream first.

These are Karen’s social media links:

These are Karen’s buy links:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09S5XH9KQ?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks&qid=1644676163&sr=8-1#detailBullets_feature_div

Barnes & Nobel: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/toes-on-the-dash-karen-c-whalen/1140989970?ean=2940160712291

Apple books: https://books.apple.com/us/book/toes-on-the-dash/id1609810860

 

 

 

9 Comments

  1. Alina K. Field

    I love Erma Bombeck! Best of luck on the new release!

    Reply
  2. Rhonda

    Great post, Karen! Can’t wait to read your book! It’s up next in my queue. 🙂

    Reply
  3. Robin Somers

    Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s A Gift from the Sea Continues to be so inspiring and relevant to me, and it’s a valuable read to reconnect to our true voice. Thank you Karen Whalen and George Cramer for this column! (My website below is in process of remodeling)

    Reply
    • Karen Whalen

      A Gift from the Sea was published over 50 years ago, and I probably read it 20 years ago, but it is timeless. I need to check out your website when it’s ready!

      Reply
  4. Donnell Ann Bell

    Oh my goodness. There’s a title for you, Daring to Dream First. What did Erma Bombeck say to you, Karen? I’m so excited to read your tow truck mystery. Your background is fabulous to ignite your dream. Expecting great things from you.

    Thanks, George!

    Reply
    • Karen Whalen

      I like that title. So, Erma sent me a note about the last book she was writing at the time and she signed it, “You are a good friend.” I think I had written to her that I felt as if I knew her well from her books, and that was her response. I treasure that note. I’m a fangirl!

      Reply
  5. Pam

    I’m here!! I love the book! Thank you for everything!

    Reply
  6. Michael A. Black

    Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. This was a very inspiring post. Best of luck to you.

    Reply
    • Karen Whalen

      Thanks. We all need a little inspiration sometimes!

      Reply

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LAURA JENSEN WALKER – Agatha-Nominated Cozy Mystery Author

Laura Jensen Walker knew she wanted to be a writer ever since she read 103 books in Miss Vopelensky’s first-grade class.

A lifelong lover of mysteries, I never dreamed I’d someday be writing them!

Eager to see the world, I joined the Air Force at 19 and headed off into that wild blue yonder flying a typewriter across Europe. Although my clerk-typist job was boring, traveling was bliss. By the time I was 23, I had visited 15 countries and fallen in love with tea and the land of my heart—England. Later, I majored in journalism, but it took cancer at age 35 to push me to follow my writing dreams of becoming an author. My first book, Dated Jekyll, Married Hyde (non-fiction humor ala Erma Bombeck), came out in 1997. Since then, I’ve written ten humorous non-fiction books and ten novels (chick lit and cozies.)

Murder Most Sweet (Crooked Lane), featuring baker, breast-cancer survivor, and writer Teddie St. John, is my first cozy, released last fall during the pandemic. I wanted to see someone like me in a mystery—a woman who chose to “go flat” after having two mastectomies and is now living her best life. Breasts don’t make a woman. An early editor who read and loved my manuscript, said diversity is important in crime fiction, but diversity isn’t only about color. To my delight and gratitude Murder Most Sweet is nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Such a lovely surprise and honor.

Deadly Delights, the sequel to Murder Most Sweet, is my third cozy and twentieth book. (I never dreamed I’d have 20 books under my belt, and still more to come.)

August in Lake Potawatomi, Wisconsin, always means one thing: the annual baking contest. Picture The Great British Baking Show, writ Midwestern. Naturally, bon vivant baker-turned-mystery writer Teddie St. John has a pie in the ring. The white baking tent boasts an array of folding tables housing each entrant’s daily baked good. And at one of those tables sits the corpse of the lecherous head judge, his face half-buried in a delectable coconut cream pie with Teddie’s distinctive embossed rolling pin by his side…covered with blood. With the help of her friends, Teddie must concoct a recipe to clear her name–if the real killer doesn’t ice her first.

I’m thrilled by the great advance reviews Deadly Delights has received.

“Lively characters complement the twisty plot.”
—Publishers Weekly

Deadly Delights moves along at warp speed… [Walker’s] writing and story development is top notch.”
—New York Journal of Books

The ironic thing about the ‘warp speed’ comment is that I wrote Deadly Delights in two-and-a-half months. For many, March and April 2020 were a scary, anxious time as we tried to understand and cope with this crazy pandemic, the likes of which hadn’t been seen in more than a century. Added to the overall anxiety, I have comorbidities that put me in a higher risk group. Scary. I couldn’t focus on anything, including writing and reading. I tried to escape in a good book—some I’d been eagerly anticipating for months—but couldn’t concentrate. Reading has been a joy and great escape my whole life. Except this time. Such a weird feeling—one that I’m happy to say has passed. I also didn’t write a single word on my third cozy during those first two months of the pandemic. The cozy that was due to my editor July 1. Luckily, I managed to get a two-week extension, then wrote like the wind to make that July 15 deadline. My journalism background of writing tight and fast saved me.

My second cozy, Hope, Faith, & a Corpse, a clerical mystery featuring the first Episcopal woman priest in Faith Chapel’s 160-year history, was released in January.

Do you write in more than one genre? I’ve written non-fiction and chick-lit in the past and plan to write more non-fiction and also historical fiction.

What are you currently working on? I’m writing a “Pandemic Postscript” to the memoir I wrote a few years ago that my agent loved but couldn’t sell due to my lack of platform. In non-fiction, it’s essential to have a “platform” of some kind, whether it’s being on the speaking circuit and regularly speaking to large groups around the country who will then buy your book at the back of the room, having a YouTube channel with a zillion subscribers, or having a large/decent social media following.

At the time—prior to signing my cozy contract—I’d been out of the writing/publishing world for more than a decade and no longer had a reader following. I’d stopped public speaking, wasn’t on Twitter, and only had a couple hundred Facebook friends. Multiple editors at several publishing houses told my agent how much they loved the writing in my memoir, but regretfully had to turn it down since I had no platform. Hopefully (fingers crossed) now that I have readers again, a monthly newsletter with a decent number of subscribers, a larger FB presence, and a (small) Twitter and Instagram following, my memoir, the book of my soul, will finally sell.

I’m also started working on my first historical fiction—the book of my heart, set in WWII England—but I’m not ready to say anything more about it yet.

We hear of strong-willed characters. Do yours behave, or do they run the show? Oh, they run the show. Before I began writing fiction when I’d ask a novelist about how their work-in-progress was going, and they’d respond with something like, “I’m waiting for my character to reveal what’s next,” I’d inwardly scoff and think, “You’re the writer; you’re in charge!” Then I started writing my first novel. Ha! In fact, when I started writing my first cozy (now shelved), one of the minor characters, an Episcopal woman priest, let me know she was a major character deserving of her own book. Thus, Hope, Faith, & a Corpse was born.

Do you outline, or are you a pantser? Outline is a dirty word in my house. I’m a total pantser. Mostly. Before I begin my WIP, I usually need to know what the ending is. That way, I have a starting point and an end point, and I fill in the middle. However, in both of my Bookish Baker mysteries, the endings I’d initially envisioned (including the murderer in one—I won’t say which one) changed as the story unfolded.

Looking to the future, what’s in store for you? Hopefully, more cozies in both my series, the Bookish Baker Mysteries and Faith Chapel Mysteries and contracts for the book of my soul (my memoir) and the book of my heart (the historical fiction I’ve been yearning to write for more than three decades.)

How do our readers contact you?

Please contact me through my website, www.laurajensenwalker.com (if you sign up for my newsletter, you get a free gift!)
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurajensenwalker/
Facebook Laura Jensen Walker | Facebook
Readers can also connect with me on Twitter @LauraJensenWal1

5 Comments

  1. Glenda Carroll

    Following your dreams at any age, whether you’re 35 or 75, is the only way to go. Good for you!!

    Reply
  2. Lynn

    Thank you for your service and developing a character who doesn’t define herself with body parts.

    Reply
  3. Jennifer

    I swing back and forth between which series I like more – the Bookish Baker mysteries or Hope, Faith and a Corpse. I like mystery plots in the HFC, but I love Teddie. I think she’s inspiring and offers a fresh perspective in the cozy world. Many readers will appreciate her because many women are either breast cancer survivors or have had a breast cancer scare. Teddie turns it into a reason to change her life, and I love that.

    Reply
  4. Kathy levernier

    Your fabulous?
    Love your writing. We lived in Wisconsin, and
    Enjoy the British baking show. So so fun.
    Your cover’s are both such great fun.
    CONGRATULATIONS 20 books.

    Reply
  5. Michael A, Black

    Yours is a truly inspiring story. Good luck with your writing and thank you for your service to our country.

    Reply

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