Karleen Koen is interested in history, particularly women’s place in it. Intimacy, gender issues, and spiritual quests are themes she explores in her fiction. She lives in Houston and is also the author of Dark Angels, Now Face to Face, and Before Versailles. Her website is www.karleenkoen.net. Her blog, called Writing Life, where she does writing practice, is at www.wordpress.karleenkoen.com.
I care about you. I care about making an interesting, emotionally intelligent story.
What is your book about? Please provide a description.
Through a Glass Darkly in a coming of age story set in the early 18th century in the courts of England and France and against the drama of the South Sea Bubble, which was the first widespread economic depression. George I has just come across the channel to wear England's crown, but the Pretender and his adherents lurk in the background. The daughter of a famous duke, young Barbara Alderley, has lived her life away from London, but now must make her way in a new marriage and at court where deceit and treachery are commonplace. She believes she knows the man she has married. She believes she will live happily ever after. Will the secrets she uncovers ruin her or deepen her?
How long have you been at work on this book?
It took me 5 years to write TAGD. As a magazine editor, I had written many things, but fiction is a beast of a different color. I taught myself how to write with TAGD, and I feel honored that the characters that came out of that long, enormous writing exercise have gladdened and maddened the hearts of so many readers.
How did the idea originate?
Something happened to me (not the plot for TAGD). It hurt me so deeply I didn't think I would recover, but I had children and a family, and I had to keep moving forward. I wanted to somehow capture a story of innocence tested and trust broken and what one does then.......my day job ended, my son was small. I sat myself down and tried to figure out how to write a novel.
Did the book entail any unusual writing habits or places?
Used Chiswick and Ham House as my models, went to England, in fact, to see them, and just selected a picture from the National Trust Guide to England as Tamworth. Then I created a notebook of faces torn from magazines and details of backstory and a rough layout of Devane House. I immersed myself in architectural history, which a previous job at a home and garden magazine, had introduced me to. With time, it all became real to me, and hopefully, I made it real to the reader.
