Abilene Author: Karen Witemeyer

A favorite pastime for Karen Witemeyer growing up was getting lost in a good book. She still loves reading, but nowadays much of her reading time is spent going over her own manuscripts, getting them ready for the publisher.

Karen is a catalog specialist in the registrar’s office at Abilene Christian University. But her followers know her as a best-selling author of Christian historical fiction. Karen grew up in California, never dreaming that her future books would be set in Texas. Karen fell in love with the Lone Star state and her future husband, Wes, when both were students at ACU in the 1990s.

Karen started her writing career with shorter articles before attending an American Christian Fiction Writers conference. She met an editor from Bethany House there and submitted a proposal. Her idea wasn’t accepted, but the editor found the setting for the story–a dress shop–appealing. She suggested Karen try again, emphasizing the dress shop. That was an odd suggestion to Karen, based on the dress shop’s minor appearance in the novel.

“In the original story, the dress shop burned to the ground on page four,” she said.

But she did as the editor suggested and wrote A Tailor-Made Bride, which was published in 2010. It’s been a whirlwind since then. Karen’s first novels were stand-alones, but she now primarily writes series. The latest is the Texas Ever After Series, based on reimagined fairy tales.

The latest in the series, If the Boot Fits, was published in March and the final installment, Cloaked in Beauty, is due out in December. She recently signed a contract for a new series, tentatively titled The Secret Society of Spinsters.

Most of Karen’s novels are set in Texas in the 1880s and 1890s. That’s not likely to change, thanks to their obvious appeal. Her latest book debuted at Number 10 on the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association fiction best-seller list.

“That was a pretty big deal for me!” she said.