Karen Kingsbury, Best-selling Christian Author of Unlocked, about Autism

by Jean Purcell

jean.purcell@opinebooks.com

If you have not yet read any of Karen Kingsbury's books, then you and I are in the same boat. I do not usually gravitate toward bestselling fiction. However, I want to pass this info along to you, and to make a note to myself, about Karen Kingsbury's NYT best-seller: Unlocked. The author's name appears in a list I published earlier, of best-selling Christian books of 2010.

Author Karen Kingsbury/PRWeb

     Unlocked came about from the author's experience, as many books do. Kingsbury observed the struggles of a young friend considered to be "autistic"; she saw his condition as a "locked in" situation. Her close proximity to autism issues led her to learn more about autism and what was called "the autistic community"--parents, extended family, friends of family, and doctors and teachers.     

      If you want to know more about autism and the sub-topic, very important, of bullying, you can go to YouTube for "special behind-the-scenes insight into the writing of the book and Kingsbury's personal connection to the disease, through family friends who inspired Unlocked" (PRWeb,  Thursday, October 6, 2011).  

     I'll ask for the book at my local library in Howard County, Maryland, where my husband Jim and I borrow fiction books. Unlocked is also available through brick-and-mortar stores and on-line booksellers. 

Famous Fiction: Eudora Welty

Cover via Amazonby Jean Purcell
editor@opinebooks.com
Opine eStore and Book Cafe



I have been a Eudora Welty fan for so long I can hardly remember when the admiration started. Yes, I do...it was through her book Delta Wedding. I was a young wife and mother in my 20s, and the way she described the place of the wedding and a character tempted to break a lot of glass struck some indefinable chord that became unforgettable, yet still untraceable.
     Eudora Welty was a single, white, female, southern...writer. Mississippi, no less. When Medgar Evers was gunned down in his driveway in Jackson, Mississippi (1963), she wrote an article for the local newspaper describing the killer. When he was caught, not due to her description--"How could she know?"--he fit the profile she had written. I read about that years later, however. I felt that she must have had the sense of anger due that act, yet she kept her senses about her...to write, to profile one real-life, ignorant, and hate-filled murderer. A friend of other writers, whatever their bent or background, she never married and, as far as I know, she lived all her life in the family home, in Jackson.
     What she could do with words and imagination! They were like twins of her writing landscape.
     One birthday, I received from our friend Sylvia Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings, based on a series of lectures she once gave somewhere. Some ivy league university, I think. After reading the book, I thought and felt that I understood better how and why she wrote.
     Another big part of the "how" she wrote lies in a story I once read about her in a newspaper. She would lay the typewritten pages of a chapter all along the dining room table. She would stand over them and read. And read. And examine. And dissect. Word by word by word.
      

Related articles

• Eudora Welty on Plot (kellyaatkins.com)
• The Golden Apples by Eudora Welty - review (guardian.co.uk)

I'm Frustrated

by Jean Purcell

"I'm frustrated" is a popular Google search phrase. The fact tells me that writers have a topic to think about and write about. Is the frustration due to money? time? relationships? education? job? no job? Could it be over a sense of being blocked regarding bigger things, such as "the meaning of life"? Frustration builds when anyone has a sense of being blocked, cut off from "something" that is known or elusive, or trying to go in too many directions at once.

As a writer, are you frustrated? Write about it.

Related articles to lower frustration?

• Why We Write: Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris (gointothestory.blcklst.com)
• Writers Tips #79: Proofing Your MSS (worddreams.wordpress.com)
• Writing Essays: How to Beat Writer's Block (distance-education.org)