We recently connected with Karen Docter and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Karen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I have written in some form or another my entire life. I even graduated college with a Technical Journalism degree. But it wasn’t until my middle daughter was two years old that I decided to quit my challenging job in an office to become a stay-at-home mom.

Both my husband and I were working long hours, seven days a week (we were also building our own business), and she was having difficulties adjusting. So, I quit my job, while my husband carried on with the business. To supplement our income, I took on daycare. Then, I had trouble adjusting! LOL I went from a challenging accounts receivable and management position to staying home with up to a dozen children under the age of five (yes, this was eons ago). Boy, was that an eye-opener!

I quickly learned that I needed a mental challenge. I tried reading books, but it wasn’t enough. Finally, I decided to write one of my own, one that had been niggling my brain for some time. I’d barely written two chapters when I decided that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It didn’t take me long to realize that this kind of writing was completely different than anything I’d tried before, but I loved the challenge and the creativity that it’s generated in me since that day.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Nothing makes me happier than to help the very real men and women in my head achieve their dreams and fall in love. I write both romantic suspense and contemporary romance because my muse tends to dance across the line between light and dark on a whim. Imagine the challenge she presents when she’s dancing back and forth at the
same time! I think my versatility appeals to my readers, many of which read both of my genres.

I started this journey a long time ago with the idea of writing for the traditional romance markets. I fought my leanings toward suspense for years, ripping those elements out of my contemporaries because the suspense didn’t fit within the parameters of the traditional markets. In all honesty, it drove me a little crazy. I was neither beast nor fowl. I complained one day to a wonderful critique partner about ripping apart yet another contemporary. She said quite simply, “Write the book as a suspense.” When I retorted that I didn’t write suspense, she told me, “Yes, hon, you do; what do you think you’ve been doing all these years?” It was a truly inspirational, defining moment for me. I had to set aside Karen Docter, who wrote contemporary romance, so that K.L. Docter could do her thing unfettered.

It was truly freeing. I had finally found my two voices. And, yes, there are two in my head at all times now. When I open up a K..L. file, I know I’m writing a psychological woman in jeopardy story with a heavy dose of romance. When “Karen” shows up, I’m writing pure romance with a hint of humor. I no longer get them mixed up in my head or the books. My readers are guaranteed the same thing, which is important for those who don’t read across the genres. I don’t want my contemporary readers to pick up a K.L. book and be shocked to find a more gritty book.

So my romantic comedies and contemporaries are spicy sweet, hometown hero romances. My True Love in Uniform series is about the men and women who work at the police department in the fictional suburb of Riverton, Colorado, and how their lives change when they meet their love. This series will continue as long as I have single cops to marry off.

My romantic suspense novels are also filled with romance, although the dangers the hero and heroine face are intense, usually because a serial killer is bent on ending one or both of their lives. My Thorne’s Thorns series tells the individual stories of six foster brothers with protective streaks a mile wide for their families and the women who enter their lives. I’m not particularly graphic. Think more woman-in-jeopardy.

No matter what story a reader picks up, they will find a complete story with a HEA. No cliffhangers, even with the series. Each book can be read as a standalone.

I credit a huge part of this ability to focus to the plotting technique I learned many years ago and taught online to hundreds of writers across Romance Writers of America and other writing groups. It’s called The “W” Plot…or The Other White Meat for Plotters. I turned what I learned into a hands-on-your-own-book plotting class that I taught in month-long workshops for over 20 years. My health forced me to hang up my online hat several years ago, but I still do the occasional personal workshop, and I provide the entire detailed workshop on my website so authors can still learn how to focus their writing as well. It’s one of the ways I have tried over the years to give back to the writing community that has taught me so much.

How did you build your audience on social media?

When I first started this journey, I joined several writers’ groups to learn as much as I could about the business and my craft. Every one of them recommended building an audience on social media. At the time, I took that to heart and joined MySpace (yep, I’ve been around awhile), then Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, to name a few. What I didn’t realize at the time was that didn’t mean connecting with my fellow writers!

You want to connect with your fellow writers and other industry professionals. But when I finally published my first novel, I realized that all of my social media building was toward the industry, not readers. Rude awakening! Much as we’d all love to say our fellow authors are buying our books, it’s not reality. Readers are our customers. It should have occurred to me, but it didn’t. Anyway, I had to scramble to adjust my social media in the right direction. Thankfully, I had the social media set up. I needed to redirect my efforts.

That said, the second lesson I learned about social media is to not try to be all things to all people. That way lies madness! It’s impossible to keep up with every social media platform. Pick the 1-3 that you feel most comfortable with and focus your attention there. I had to drop several platforms because I spent my entire day just doing social media. I don’t jump on the bandwagon with each new platform that pops up either. Let them grow and mature. See if they stick around long enough for you to consider them as options. And, if you dread using a platform, let it go. Focusing your attention should help you to fine-tune how much time you spend each day on social media, so you can do what you actually want to do…write or plot or plan a vacation or…you get the picture.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding thing for me as a writer is when I hear from a reader that something has resonated with them. In my contemporary romance series, True Love in Uniform, I’ve focused on the single cops (both men and women) who work at a precinct that I’ve created in a fictional town in Colorado. I attended the Citizen’s Police Academy in the local city where I lived and learned a lot about a small, suburban precinct and how it worked, and I got to know the cops there before I started writing the first of these books. I wanted the books to have an authentic feel.

My True Love in Uniform series is not about precinct life, although there are bits and pieces of their work in the books. The books are centered on the lives and loves of these policemen and women outside of their jobs. So many of our law enforcement officers have gotten a bad rap because of a few bad stories in the media, and I wanted to show that most cops are just like us. They want to fall in love and have normal lives.

It’s been gratifying to receive emails from cops or loved ones with officers in the family who love reading my books. They’re uplifting and show that they’re good people.

I received a couple of emails from readers of domestic abuse who read the first books in my Thorne’s Thorns romantic suspense series that thanked me for my treatment of the heroine’s abuse from her ex-husband. I don’t like to be graphic in anything (even when the serial killer murders someone). I gave them just enough to know what was going on in the past to the heroine without triggering them.

It is satisfying to know when I succeed in touching emotions, making a reader cry in sympathy or even gladness, to feel what the character are feeling…without me in the mix.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.karendocter.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenDocterAuthor
• Twitter: https://x.com/KarenDocter
• Other: Facebook K.L. Docter: https://www.facebook.com/kldocter/
  Docter in the House! Chat Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1958681054151982
  Book Bench for Romance Lovers Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/281099382014548
  Midnight in the Garden Readers Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/194345948124864
  Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/karendocter/