I took the dog for a walk. It was colder than I expected, a bitter wind was blowing. I was dressed for the cold but not for the wind. Instead of going for our usual four miles, I cut it down to two miles.[..]
In order to tour the C.S. Lewis home, The Kilns, one must email in advance and arrange a tour. The home is not open to the public otherwise. I didn't know that, of course, until just a couple of weeks ago. I don't even know[..]
Two of my adult children made major moves right before the pandemic rocked the entire world and sent us into an isolation most of us had only read about in dystopian novels. Newscaster Gayle King said she spent 105 days never leaving her NYC[..]
It's not even 8 a.m. on the West Coast as I type this and already this day has started off with several deep conversations. The first was with a daughter dealing with the aftermath of her 2nd Covid shot. A bit of a headache and[..]
Several years ago, while working on Mother of Rain, the beginning of the Appalachian novels I wrote, I snuck in late to the evening service at Christians Bend Church in Tennessee. I had not been in the church since 1968. The last time I[..]
I made cornbread. The old-fashioned kind. You know, with corn meal and flour, not the kind that comes out of a Jiffy or Dave's box. There was a time when I knew how to make cornbread from heart, the way I do my biscuits. Today,[..]
I can't stop thinking about him and I don't even know who he is. Every Sunday during church service we have a time set aside for prayer. Anyone in need of prayer can write out a request and put it in the donation basket. Pastor[..]
Some of my friends quit church long ago, disappointed and/or hurt by a hierarchy of patriarchy, a system designed specifically to suppress the voices of all but the men in power. Just this past week I heard a woman with a doctorate declare that the[..]
Author/Journalist Karen Spears Zacharias is a Gold Star daughter and an alumna of Oregon State University, Shepherd University and University of West Scotland.
Karen's work has been featured in the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, National Public Radio, and Good Morning America.
Her debut novel, Mother of Rain (Mercer University Press), received the Weatherford Award for Best in Appalachian Fiction from Berea College and was adapted for the stage by Georgia's Historic State Theater, The Springer. In 2018, Karen was named Appalachian Heritage Writer by Shepherd University, and Mother of Rain was chosen as the One Book One West Virginia Read.
Her first true crime book A Silence of Mockingbirds was chosen by the city of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as the One City Read.
The Murder Gene is her second true crime work.
Karen and her husband, Tim, make their home in Deschutes County, Oregon.
For more information on Karen and her books, click here