About Me

---

Karen Young is the international bestselling author of thirty-eight novels. She has more than ten million books in print and is the recipient of the coveted RITA award from Romance Writers of America and the Career Achievement and Reviewer’s Choice awards from Romantic Times magazine. She is known as “a spellbinding storyteller who writes with sensitivity about issues facing contemporary women.” Karen's career in writing fiction for women has run the gamut from traditional romance to mystery thrillers to inspirational fiction. In her relationship-driven plots, she creates characters that could easily be her readers, and then places them in extraordinary circumstances while adding suspense to the mix.

“Writng fulfills something inside me like nothing else.
I’m interested in people, in their lives, in who they are, in their interests, in what makes them tick, in what makes them happy or sad or good or bad. Spinning a tale with characters drawn from whole cloth out of my imagination is just plain fun. But I want my books to speak to my readers. I’m drawn to explore the problems of contemporary women. With three daughters of my own, I see first hand the ups and downs of relationships, of difficulties women face in balancing career with marriage and motherhood, with the challenge of blended families as a result of divorce and— looking beyond my family—to issues facing society as a whole.”

- Karen Young

Just as I entered by sixties, I lost my husband to a heart attack. Not only was my world changed, but I was changed in ways too numerous to mention. One was joyous: I was drawn back to the faith of my childhood. And, along with that, I began to explore the possibility of writing inspirational fiction. Over the years as I’ve conceived and developed plots relevant to the lives of contemporary women, there is one element that I feel is overlooked. And that is spirituality--faith. My books have always included the tension between right and wrong, but I mostly avoided adding the spiritual tension, those hard questions and struggles when characters inevitably dealt with trouble. Writing good inspirational fiction is not about adding a religious component to a book; it’s so much more. Now I freely explore the spiritual dimension of my characters.

The last three books I wrote are categorized as Christian fiction. I hope my readers will explore these three novels. They were perhaps the most fulfilling for me to write.

**Blood Bayou**

**Missing Max**

**Lie for Me**

I am now retired from writing and live quietly in Houston, Texas surrounded by family and friends.  I now have the freedom to do all the things I was never able to do while writing and meeting pesky deadlines. I swim every single morning of my life and am addicted to the way I feel after I've had that workout. I spend a lot of time with my sister who lives next door to me and together we  enjoy all the pleasures of being grandmothers and sharing stories about the grandkids we love and adore. I have a wonderful circle of friends and a very special group of ladies in my Bible study group who I see regularly. Life is good as I live out my golden years and I am truly grateful.