We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Karen Smith. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Karen below.

Hi Karen, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

As well as being a freelance writer and editor, I’m also an author. I mainly write romance. My friends would joke that I wrote “chick lit.” Well, chicks are hens, and I’m the only hen in my household. When I went freelance, I had ambitions of becoming a publisher and a company that publishes book is often called a publishing house. So, I named my business Hen House Publishing.

I no longer have ambitions of becoming a publishing house, but the name has become established.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I majored in English in college and wanted a career in publishing, Back in the 1980s, there wasn’t much opportunity for that kind of work where I lived. A couple of years after graduation, I found work in the marketing department of an architectural and engineering firm. They hired me because I could write well.

I wrote, edited, and learned (and applied) page design over the next 25 years in various corporate capacities. I worked on proposals, brochures, catalogs, newsletters, magazines, event programs, email campaigns and more. At the end of 2015, I lost my job and found myself dreading the idea of returning to the corporate world. So, I set myself up as a freelance professional offering writing, editing, proofreading, and document design services.

Since January 2016, I have refined and learned and focused my work. Rather than take anything that comes my way, I have learned to evaluate a project to decide if it’s a good fit and no longer accept project that don’t suit me well. For instance, I avoid academic work and I don’t write or edit horror. I do still write some short-form, business-oriented content, but prefer to ghostwrite fiction. Screenplay-to-novel adaptations are great fun! I edit marketing collateral for a California marketing firm, which keeps those skills sharp. Ghostwriting and editing compel me to explore topics and genres I don’t normally read.

I remain a generalist rather than a specialist. I enjoy the variety of projects and topics that come with being a generalist; I don’t get bored. My clients enjoy the benefit of that broad-spectrum experience, too. I know a little bit about a whole lot of stuff, which means I’m great at detecting lapses in verisimilitude and realism when editing fiction.

What I’d like potential clients and fans to know about me is that I focus on what’s best for the manuscript. Clarity trumps grammar. I don multiple perspectives to write and edit according to what best resonates with the audience (i.e., readers) without losing the author’s distinctive voice.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I only came to realize in the last 10+ years how quickly language evolves. Throughout my corporate career, I applied the same grammatical conventions I learned in school, only to be corrected by a colleague’s comment that the Associated Press Stylebook accepted “they” as a singular pronoun in 2010. That was earth-shattering for me.

I still don’t like it, but that was the kick I needed to begin my own evolution, adapting to changes in language conventions.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I can’t say there’s a mission or goal that drives my creative journey. I’ve always been a storyteller. In my teens, I wrote stories and submitted them to magazines. I have the handwritten manuscripts and floppy disks of unpublished novels that will never see the light of day.

There have been detours and roadblocks. A busy life with a full-time job, children, livestock, and simple discouragement contributed to a 20-year hiatus from writing. We writers are needy souls who crave external validation. I didn’t get it; in fact, I was told no one would ever want to read what I wrote. Then when I finally succumbed to the compulsion to write, what I wrote embarrassed my family. I adopted a pen name to give them that distance and plausible deniability they desired.

Since 2014, I’ve published over 30 books, not counting the books I have ghostwritten for clients.

The thing that drives my creative journey is the compulsion to write stories. I like to think I’m pretty good at what I do.

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HenHousePublishing1/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henhousepublishing
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/HollyBargoBooks
• Other: My business website is https://www.hollybargobooks.com, and my author website is https://www.facebooks.com/HollyBargoBooks/