You don’t often meet adults who have imaginary friends, but I have dozens—the characters who populate my novels! They love to misbehave, thank God, or I’d have nothing to write about . . . My characters tend to get themselves into humorous situations—or sometimes, serious situations that they end up approaching with humor. For this reason, I love romantic comedies most of all, probably because my life has evolved as one over the last couple of decades.

I’ve been married to the same guy for almost twenty years, and he’s one of the funniest people on the planet. Really—if he ever quits his day job, he could be a stand-up comic. And he’d probably make more than I did after graduating college with an art history degree . . . yeah, a very impractical course of study. But I loved it, and that counts for something. Still, my secret desire was to write, so after years of working in museums and galleries, I wrote my first novel—instead of my masters’ thesis. I’ve never regretted it, though I have to admit that my characters have much more exciting adventures than I do! But that’s the difference between fiction and life, right? I’m not a detail person, but people like my agent encourage me to supply them! So here are the details. I’ll put this more “official” biography into third person, in case you’re trying to cut-and-paste. Karen Kendall is the author of over twenty novels and novellas for several publishers: Avon/Harper Collins, Signet/Penguin Group and Harlequin. She is the recipient of awards such as the Maggie, the Book Buyer’s Best, the Write Touch and R.T. Magazine’s Top Pick, among others. Karen has been featured in publications such as the Sun-Sentinel, the Gulf Coast Times, the Boca Raton Observer, Weston Lifetyle Magazine and Our City Weston News. She grew up in Austin, Texas and earned a BA in art history from Smith College, later doing graduate work in art history and museum education at the University of Texas at Austin. She worked with children’s programs in several museums and still loves kids’ art. Karen has lived in Georgia, New York and Connecticut. She now resides in south Florida with her husband, two greyhounds, a cat . . . and lots of fictional friends! Of course, she claims to have real ones, too. What’s that? You want to know about my character, and not just my characters’ characters? Well, okay. I collect shoes, which generally sit around with no feet in them because I work barefoot. I collect handbags, which generally sit around with no money in them because writing is not as lucrative as some might suspect. I collect books, but must often purge the collection because they are so heavy that en mass, they threaten to sink the house into the Everglades. I’m an introvert with brief flashes of extrovert, during which I give workshops and go to conferences. I love spending time with my husband, who is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. I loathe hot, steamy weather, which is ironic since I live near Miami, the kingdom of heat and steam. I can’t play any sport that involves a ball and hand-eye coordination but I do belong to a gym, where I feel like a fat Clydesdale next to all the tiny, bosomy, gorgeous Latina women. What else? Despite looking like a girly-girl, I like to build things and am not afraid to use power tools. I get inspired by HGTV. I also get inspired by the Food Network. And I’m addicted to those creepy shows like Forensic Files and Cold Case Files. My husband jokes that he’s getting worried about that . . . So. Enough about me. Really, my characters are more interesting!