Featured Interview With Chris Karlsen
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Chicago and lived there until high school when my family moved to Southern California. I went to high school in SoCal and attended UCLA. I graduated with a business degree. I returned to Chicago, a city I love and worked for several years there then came back to the Los Angeles area. I worked in L.A. for 20+ years and retired to the Pacific Northwest. We live on a small peninsula between Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula. We had 4 horses, three were rescues. They've passed away now. We've had rescue dogs since 1989 and currently have four crazy fur babies running the house.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
My mother was a voracious reader and I learned to love books before I was a teen. I loved creative writing classes but when I attended university I was too scared I couldn't make a living writing and got a business degree. After I retired from law enforcement I decided it was time to write the story I had in the back of my head for years and had been waiting to be told. I started the manuscript and at the same time started taking writing workshops, seminars and attending conferences to learn the craft.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite authors are Bernard Cornwell, Julie Anne Long, and Joe Wambaugh. I love the visuals and visceral scenes Cornwell creates. He imbues a fun and wry humor in his stories too. Julie Anne Long writes wonderful hero/heroine interaction and terrific love scenes. I muddle through love scenes when I am writing romances and use her colorful action as inspiration. Wambaugh writes the best cop stories but then he was a cop with LAPD. His police officers are written with the special humor cops enjoy and the pathos that is part of the job. I read historical fiction, romance and thriller/suspense.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
I knew I never wanted to write contemporary cop stories. I love history (my father was a history professor and I grew up with it). I thought it would be fun to write a detective but from a different time. Victorian London is such a great setting for suspense and colorful characters. I set my Bloodstone series in Victorian London. I thoroughly enjoy writing my detective, Rudyard Bloodstone. He is with the London Metropolitan Police force and works in the late 1800's, when there was no science to help him with a case. Several years ago a London detective told me about an incident when she was vacationing in Morocco and a British couple came dashing in to the hotel ranting about having been robbed at snake point. I remembered that and tucked the unique information away for a story one day. A Venomous Love is based on that event. A lovely heiress is attacked by a snake wielding suspect. She survives but for reasons unknown to her, he continues to stalk her. Detective Bloodstone and his partner have little clues to work with and struggle to solve the case. In the midst of their investigation the negative publicity triggers a threat of Scotland Yard taking over the case, which puts additional pressure on them, as a frightened public demands results. The attacks on other citizens increase while the heiress is still threatened. Bloodstone brings in his brother to act as a bodyguard. There is the hint of a romance brewing between them and I hope to develop that in the next Bloodstone book.
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