Five Secrets From Author Karin Kaufman

Today I bring you Karin Kaufman and her Five Secrets.  I love learning secrets, don't you? Wait until you read about which POV was her favorite to write! 

Karin writes mysteries (check out her website) and children's books. Although her mysteries are written from a Christian perspective, they don't downplay the evil we confront in this world—or the isolation Christians sometimes feel in what is a largely secular culture. But she rejects the notion that such fiction must be dark or oppressive. Because there is also goodness in this world—love, friendship, laughter, faithful dogs, piping hot cups of coffee— and it's every bit as real as the evil.

The Witch Tree, the first in her Anna Denning mystery series, was a finalist for a 2011 Grace Award. Karin lives near the foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains with Sophie, her crazy but lovable shelter dog.

Welcome Karin, please tell us Five Secrets we may not know about The Adventures of Geraldine Woolkins and you, but will after today!

1) I hadn’t planned on writing The Adventures of Geraldine Woolkins, and if someone had told me just one year ago that I’d write a children’s book, I never would have believed them. But Geraldine’s story came to me out of the blue last autumn, while I was trying to sleep one night (because all the best ideas come when you’re trying to sleep). Before I knew it, I’d written the entire first chapter of Geraldine’s adventures in my head. When I got up the next morning, I started work on the book. I knew I had to write it. You never know where God is going to lead you.

2) Okay, looking back, I should have known I’d write a children’s book one day, especially one also intended for adults. I still have fond memories of books I read as a child, like A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and The Story about Ping by Marjorie Flack, and I wanted to capture that warm feeling, for both adults and children, and put it in my own book. I don’t care what age you are, who doesn’t want to curl up in bed with a cozy book about young forest animals? The main difference between my book and the books I read as a child is that in my book, God is front and center. He’s at the heart of it all—the Woolkins family and their world. Geraldine and her family believe in Him, as do most of the creatures they encounter.

3) I had the best time writing from a young mouse’s point of view! (Strangely, it wasn’t difficult at all. What does that say about me?) Geraldine experiences the wonder of what is for her an always brand-new world: leaves turning brilliant colors in October, the “marshmallow” world of snow in December, sledding down Acorn Hill on a piece of tree bark, even the terrifying wolves of the barren land. And that gave me a chance to imagine what it might be like for a very tiny creature to experience such things for the first time—and imagine what God the Creator was thinking when he made them all.

4) I’m thinking of writing The Further Adventures of Geraldine Woolkins, taking the Woolkins mouse family through the winter months, January to March, in their oak forest home.

5) My favorite children’s stories of all time are stories I read only as an adult, never as a child: the seven books that make up C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.

Blurb :
Young Geraldine longs to have adventures as thrilling as those in the Book of Tales, the book her papa reads to her and her brother Button at night. More than that, she wants to be brave—a seemingly impossible task in a world where ravens throw black shadows over the earth and wolves prowl barren lands in search of their prey. But Geraldine is a mouse. The weakest of ground things. Why was she, who wants so much to be brave, created by God to be small and quivering?

The book’s ten stories follow the Woolkins family—Papa, Mama, Geraldine, and Button—from October to December, as they face their rather human trials and tribulations and Geraldine struggles to understand Very Very Big Hands, the creator of all, including ravens and wolves.
Suitable for readers of most ages. Parents will want to read the book to younger children, preferably after making them a cup of cocoa.


Buy Links:
Amazon | Kobo | B&N

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