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

Alright, Karen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?

I began writing my debut novel A Lady in the Smoke (pub. 2016) for selfish reasons; I felt like my brain was turning mushy. In 2001, I had finished my PhD at NYU, writing on the Victorian medical, legal, and popular literature about railway disasters and their injuries, and how those texts provide the theoretical framework for Freud’s theories of hysteria, WWI “shell shock,” and what we call PTSD. Subsequently, I taught literature at UW-Milwaukee, and then we moved to Arizona, where I was home with two small children, reading a lot of Goodnight Moon and Berenstein Bears. Although I was doing some editing for an academic journal and writing articles, I felt myself growing farther and farther away from my intellectual life.

I had written a novel back in my 20s that was an unwieldy mashup of Robert Ludlum, Helen MacInnes, and a story I’d read in the New Yorker about Nazi war loot. (It’s in a drawer, where it belongs.) But in 2006, I decided to revive that dream of writing a publishable novel. I began with an idea drawn from my dissertation: I put a young Victorian woman and her laudanum-addicted mother on a railway train in 1874 London and ran it off the rails; chaos ensues.

I didn’t set out to build a career. Being published seemed a dream too far, but I set out to write a book that would feed my own brain and allow me to return to the questions that drove my dissertation, such as, What “counts” as an injury, especially when it isn’t visible as a broken bone? How do certain experiences rise to the level of public acknowledgment, of being worthy of addressing, litigating, and compensating? How do class and gender influence that awareness? Those questions shaped my manuscript, but it took ten years for it to morph from a young adult novel with structural problems to a historical mystery with a clear plot and character arc.

Only after it was published did I understand that writing a book was merely the first step, and a scant half, of a writing career. My writing life is a never-ending shuffle between two worlds, two roles: first, I immerse myself in my 1870s world with my characters and their troubles; then, I engage meaningfully with my community of practice. My career now includes membership on the board of a national writing organization; frequent author talks and writing workshops all over the US; bestseller status and award nominations; a website, a newsletter, and a social media presence; and an extended, wonderful community. I’ve come to see that a deep commitment to the personal questions I wrestle with — about, for example, what to do with regret over mistakes we can’t fix (a significant theme in Under a Veiled Moon) — resonate, through my fiction, with readers who write to say that they think about these questions, too. At the core of my desire to write is my deeply held belief that books enable us to step into someone else’s shoes for a time; as such, they promote empathy and a feeling of common humanity, which, especially now, after Covid, and given some of the events happening in our world, is a feeling many of us want to cultivate and cherish.

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

My fascination with the Victorian period began in grad school at NYU, where I was drawn to the big, baggy Victorian novels. I was lucky in that NYU had a deep bench of Victorianists, so I read widely in the period, from George Eliot’s novels and Browning’s poetry to Henry Morton Stanley’s accounts of Africa and Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud’s scientific treatises. I wrote my dissertation on Victorian railway disasters and their injuries, and I plundered my dissertation to write my first book, A Lady in the Smoke (2016). It was praised for its well-developed characters, the historical research, and its immersive portrayal of Victorian England’s mores.

During the year it took for Lady to find a publisher, I began writing another book, based on the true story of Fanny Dickens, Charles’s older sister, who was a musical prodigy, studying piano with one of Beethoven’s students at the Royal Academy of Music in London. But the Dickens family was financially unstable, and eventually Fanny had to leave because she couldn’t pay tuition. This was in the 1820s; she gave up her music and died young — a tragic story, I thought. But what if I set a book in the 1870s, when hundreds of music halls were looking for — and paying — women performers? Then my heroine could earn her own tuition. That book became A Dangerous Duet, and I followed with A Trace of Deceit, for which I relied on my experience working at Christie’s auction house in New York and on my research into the 1870s art and auction world and the Pantechnicon fire in Mayfair in 1874 that destroyed millions of dollars worth of paintings, antiques, and other valuables.

For each book, I began with some aspect of Victorian culture and placed a young woman in the position of amateur sleuth because someone she loves is injured or murdered. The reviews often struck similar notes: my books were praised for the round, well-developed characters, the realistic portrayal of Victorian England, the way my books immersed readers in a world. Readers said they learned a great deal of history from my books, without it intruding into the story — and that to me was important. I like to learn from historical fiction, but I don’t like “info-dumps.”

After my editor left Harper Collins, I needed a new publisher and a new path. (This happens often in publishing; most of my friends have been orphaned or had their series canceled.) I knew my strong suits: knowledge of the Victorian period and the environment and an ability to develop characters so they felt like “real people.” I had written a Scotland Yard detective as a secondary character in both A Dangerous Duet and A Trace of Deceit, but I had an idea for a grittier story, with a different inspector as the protagonist.

I’d recently discovered that discrimination against the Irish in the 1870s was pervasive and ugly — for example, before becoming Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (anonymously) published a letter in the Times calling the Irish a “wild, reckless, indolent, uncertain, and superstitious race” whose history was “an unbroken circle of bigotry and blood.” I wanted to address this in my next book, so in Down a Dark River, I introduce Michael Corravan, a former thief, dockworker, and bare-knuckles boxer from the Irish part of Whitechapel (home of Jack the Ripper murders in the 1880s). He begins as a constable in Lambeth and works his way up to Scotland Yard inspector in 1877 — a time when the Yard was nearly shut down because four inspectors had been caught taking bribes and were convicted in a spectacular, highly public five-week trial. So when Corravan is given the case of a murdered young woman from Mayfair, who has been put in a lighter boat and sent floating down the Thames, he is battling anti-Irish sentiment as well as profound public distrust, fanned by the newspapers (the social media of the day).

For the sequel Under a Veiled Moon, I began with the (true history) Princess Alice disaster of 1878, when a small wooden passenger steamship was rammed by a 900-ton iron-hulled coal carrier, throwing 650 passengers into the Thames, where most drowned. It is still the worst maritime disaster in London, and it resulted in an overhaul of maritime law. History says it was an accident, but I wondered, what if it wasn’t? In my novel, the crash is presumed to be the result of sabotage by the radical group the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which believed violence (e.g. bombing London buildings) was the way to win home rule for Ireland — a practice that still has implications for today. Corravan, being Irish, feels a special anxiety about this case, and he must hunt down the truth quickly, before anti-Irish feeling leads to yet more violence across London.

In all of my books, I take true history as the starting point; the plots evolve organically from some aspect of Victorian culture that has a parallel to our own world. My books have been compared to those of Anne Perry, Charles Todd, and Will Thomas. Down a Dark River was an Oprah Daily Pick, with “period and place are exceptionally well drawn.” Under a Veiled Moon received a starred review from Publishers Weekly: “An exceptional sequel … Odden never strikes a false note.”

As my writing has found some critical acclaim, I have expanded my community of practice. Reflecting on my own writing process has enabled me to develop and offer workshops that help other writers hone their craft. My workshops are well-attended and praised for being “hands-on” and for breaking large concepts down into small steps. I also publish a newsletter every six weeks that always includes an essay and giveaway by another woman author, and I serve on the board of Sisters in Crime, an international advocacy group for crime writers.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Like many authors I know, I have received heaps of rejections. One of my friends, Amy Stewart, who has written a very successful series, said that she decoupaged a dresser with all her rejection letters, which I thought was quite clever. At one point, I considered cutting mine into snowflakes and hanging the blizzard in my office.

In 2009, I finished a draft of my first manuscript and sent out thirty query letters to agents. This was back when it was all done by snail mail, so I’d go to the mailbox each day and find nothing. Or I’d find the sad, thin envelope with a form letter: “This is not right for us at this time.” Sometimes it was signed but usually not. Mostly I heard nothing back at all. I took some writing classes, joined a critique group, and rewrote the manuscript again and again and again. I sent out more queries and received more rejections. Through all this my husband kept saying, Don’t stop; you’re going to figure this out.

However, at one point, I decided it was time to give up. Maybe I’d go back to grad school to become a therapist, to help other people tell *their* stories. But my friend, a short-story writer, had just met a freelance editor named Masie and introduced us. A week after I sent Masie the manuscript, she called and said, This has promise, and I can help you, but it needs work. The first thing she had me do was cut the first 7 chapters out of the book. To me, they held fascinating backstory about Elizabeth and her mother, and her mortifying Season in London where she didn’t find a husband, and information about railways, accidents, injuries, narrow gauge tracks, and tunnels. I protested weakly that all of this was interesting, and Masie explained patiently, All this belongs in your head, but It doesn’t belong in the opening chapters. You need to begin with the inciting event that kicks off the plot, the train wreck, which currently doesn’t appear until chapter 8.

I writhed inwardly. As a packrat, I have a hard time throwing things away. And this meant discarding hundreds of my precious words! But this distinction between what was in my head versus on the page rang true. Masie and I worked together for about six months, and by the end, I had a different book. I sent out ten queries, and this time six people asked for the full manuscript, and I landed an agent – Josh Getzler in NYC. I received his email when I was at Disney with my family. We were in the Haunted Mansion, descending in that first room, and I heard a ding on my blackberry. Reading it, I gave a little hop and people turned around and glowered at me, thinking I was trying to break the ride.

While Josh loved the book, he pointed out two problems: first, I had a 16-year-old protagonist who was wrestling with her identity and her relationship with her mother, but I had a plot about railway sabotage, stock schemes, and parliamentary intrigue. In other words, I had a YA character arc and an adult plot arc. Second, I still had *a lot* about railways. So I rewrote it yet again as an adult mystery, sacrificing yet more railway pieces. Josh sent it out to about twenty publishers. And one day – it was a Friday – Josh emailed me that we had two editors interested. I was over the moon. My first book going to auction! And then a week later, he wrote to say that both editors went to their publishing boards and were turned down. The historical mystery market wasn’t strong, and they both had series that weren’t doing well, so they were going to have to pass. And there really wasn’t anywhere else to go with the manuscript.

I was pretty crushed for a few weeks. But I was already mulling over another idea, based in part on the life of Fanny Dickens, about a young pianist who works in one of the Victorian music halls. I started writing and was about halfway through a draft, maybe forty thousand words in, when Josh sent an email, out of the blue, saying that an editor at Random House/Alibi wanted my train wreck novel.

Of course I was thrilled, and this would begin a whole new chapter of me learning about the book business — including how being published once means virtually nothing because the industry is in constant flux. A LADY IN THE SMOKE sold well, but then Random House/Alibi shut its doors, and Priyanka moved to Harper Collins. This, I discovered, is called “being orphaned.” Based on the sales of LADY, Priyanka secured me a two-book deal at Harper Collins; but then she left before the first book was even finished, to take her dream job elsewhere. Orphaned again! At the end of that contract, Harper Collins released me, and I needed a new project and a new publisher, so I wrote Down a Dark River and Josh found another two-book deal with an enthusiastic editor at Crooked Lane. But three months later, she left. Orphaned a third time! At this point, my contract for a third book with Crooked Lane has not been renewed, even though Under a Veiled Moon was nominated for three different mystery awards this year.

There’s really nothing to be done about it. Many of my friends have had series canceled, lost agents, lost editors, or been advised to switch genres entirely. I am currently working on my sixth book, and we’ll see what happens next. What I’ve come to understand is that the only things I can control about the publishing process are my own attitude toward feedback and the qualities of the book I write.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I once thought that writing a book was a solitary endeavor. To some extent it is, but I realized very belatedly that a robust community of practice is important to a writer, and that it is deeply (and mutually) beneficial to cultivate solid relationships in this changeful, often arbitrary publishing world.

A few weeks before my first book was published, I received a lovely email from a reader that ran something like this: “I just finished the ARC of A LADY IN THE SMOKE on Netgalley and loved it! I’ve posted a review on Goodreads, and I’ll post on Amazon on pub day, as they don’t let you post before then. Could you direct me to your website? I looked for one but couldn’t find it.” This email raised many questions for me, including What on earth is an ARC on Netgalley? And Goodreads? One thing I did know is the reason she couldn’t find a website: I didn’t have one. The next three weeks, I played catch-up and realized that the second half of the writing career entailed picking my head up from my manuscript pages and looking around me to start forging connections with my community.

This belief that doing things alone is the natural, normal way to live has a long history. I grew up in a family of six that, in my experience, was very disconnected. (One of my siblings once described our family as “six people who all happened to live at the same address, and a therapist called this style of family “non-relational.”) As a child and teen, I spent a lot of time alone in my room, reading or doing crafts. I often had no idea where the other five members of my family were. When I asked for help from my busy parents, my request was often met with annoyance. I came away from my childhood home feeling that asking for help meant I was weak and stupid and bothersome, and that I had to figure things out on my own. I didn’t understand until much later that often people don’t mind — and even like — being asked for advice and help. (I’m still tentative, much more comfortable giving than receiving.) I’ve had to unlearn my old lesson and reach out for support as I write books and as I help market them. My books would not be what they are without my beta-readers, and my book sales have long depended on my community of librarians, book sellers, reading groups, other authors, and so on to get the word out. This is one of the things no one told me about being a writer — that I would find a community of clever, funny, generous, engaging, interesting people. It’s a huge perk of the job.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.karenodden.com
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• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karen.odden/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-odden-a6b8976a/
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