The best part of writing historical fiction is that the stories don’t get dated. (Because, of course, they’re SUPPOSED to be dated) But I’ll tell you what I’ve been enjoying lately: reading “dated” detective stories from the 1940’s (think Ngaio March and Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers) where a detective solves the crime without DNA and cell phones and sophisticated …
New Covers
I’m working with someone to create new covers for my Penwarrens trio of books, and I have to say it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be. That’s on me, not her. I have an image in my mind’s (sometimes questionable) eye, an image that’s probably impossible for anyone to create based on my budget. Still, we’re giving …
A grateful 4th ~
Mid-summer already and the Fourth of July sparking on the horizon. I can’t let the day go by without commemorating that constitution of ours. Remarkable, when you think about it. I write books and know (because I’m a realistic grownup) that every book I’ve written will eventually fade away and be replaced by other books. “So many books. So little …
Series are Serious Work
Recently, I put the first book of my New Hope Series on sale for $.99. More serious thought than you might think goes into those offers, the hope being that the “right” people (i.e., someone who enjoys the sort of historicals I write) will like the first book so much that they’ll get the second book and then work their …
Finding partners. Making friends.
Write with the head. Write with the heart. I did both (not necessarily in that order), and my backlist of 15 fiction books is the result of that particular collaboration. Now I’m in the process of turning over a new leaf in promoting my books – the leaf is much heavier than expected, btw – and I’ve acquired another collaborator …
Thank you, Matt Dillon
Oh, those early tv westerns! Laramie. Bonanza. Wagon Train. Gunsmoke. Rawhide. Have Gun Will Travel. They were part of my growing-up years and influenced me as a kid. Influenced me as an author, too. I like a hero with a code of honor. I like it when the bad guys get their comeuppance. I like small towns and prairie views. …
War and Heroes
Memorial Day – still known as Decoration Day through my high school years – is a sobering day, though we celebrate it with barbecues and pool parties. This year, Facebook posted soldiers’ pics and their lives’ summaries (most of which were quite short summaries) throughout the weekend so that when you least expected it, up popped the photo of a …
Jane Addams
On this date – May 21 – 90 years ago, American woman Jane Addams died. She struggled with spiritual issues, perhaps because of the suffering that she saw among Chicago’s immigrants in the late 19th century, but her remarkable contribution is that she tried to DO something about it by establishing the settlement house known as Hull-House (hyphenated at that …
Unexpected Pleasure
I keep an annual reading journal in which I list every book I’ve read (or tried to read) by month, adding brief personal comments about it. The joy of the last few days was that I read 2 books, 1 that I really enjoyed and the other that I loved. (I have levels, you see … from “couldn’t finish” to …
Facebook Ad
I have an author’s Facebook page – in case you were wondering – and you can find it by putting ‘Karen J. Hasley, Author’ in the Facebook search bar. Sadly, I haven’t done one stinking thing with that page since 2022. Until today, that is, May 14, 2025, when I used it to create a Facebook ad introducing me and …
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