Karen Kingsbury

"Please Mommy, can I vacuum?"

Those words would be magical to any mother. But for bestselling author, Karen Kingsbury, they represent a dream come true.

Five years ago, Karen and her husband, Don, doubled the number of children in their family when they adopted three young boys from Haiti. E. J., Sean, and Josh (then ages 5, 6, and 6), had never experienced the wonders of a machine with "innards that make it go," and were fascinated by the vacuum cleaner.

"We set out to bless our new sons," Karen recalls, "but it became such a blessing to us to see them get so excited about something we take for granted—a machine that sucks up dirt."

In the same manner, Karen sets out to bless others through the books she writes and ends up being blessed in return. She shares a special relationship with her readers, receiving over 500 letters weekly. A reader from Illinois wrote, "When I finish one of Karen's books, I not only feel connected to the characters and the events, but that I have walked in the presence of Christ and that He has spoken mightily to me."

	"It's that friendship with the reader and the ministry of wanting to get to know them that inspires many of my stories."—Karen Kingsbury

Karen's novels have encouraged readers to rebuild broken marriages, delivered them from depression, and spurred them to seek God's forgiveness. Similar to the boomerang blessing she experienced with her Haitian sons, their testimonies continue to bless Karen. "It's that friendship with the reader and the ministry of wanting to get to know them—of really caring about them as people—that inspires many of my stories," she explains.

Life-changing Fiction™
So many readers have expressed the ways in which Karen's books touch their lives that she trademarked the phrase, Life-Changing Fiction™. Her Redemption Series won the 2005 Retailer's Choice award for Inspirational Fiction Series, and Ocean's Apart won Christian fiction's most prestigious honor: the 2005 Gold Medallion Book Award.

	Karen and Family

Karen's 29 emotion-charged novels, which have sold 4 million copies and consistently top the Christian bestseller lists, tackle themes "common to our human experience": depression, drunk driving, anger toward God, rebellious kids, suicide, infidelity.

And, of course, adoption, which has made such an impact on her family that Karen feels compelled to write about it. "I tell myself: Be careful; you can't have adoption in everything," she admits, laughing. One of her most recent novels, Like Dandelion Dust, features a couple who adopt a child and five years later are devastated when their son's birth father surfaces and wants custody.

The first installment of her five-book Sunrise series, scheduled for release in April 2007, chronicles a family with three adopted Haitian children. "I'm shamelessly laying my own experiences on the line in a way that will not come too close to reality," explains Karen.

Family Ties
Karen recounts her personal adoption story in A Treasury of Adoption Miracles, the fifth book in her non-fiction Treasury of Miracles series. "Adoption was a family issue," she explains. "We put the idea to our children, Kelsey, Tyler, and Austin, who were then 10, 7, and 2. We said, 'We're going to make this decision as a family. Anybody can veto this.' They all wanted to do it."

When E. J., Sean, and Josh arrived home, they were so malnourished they could barely walk and spoke only Haitian Creole. "The first two months were the most difficult because we couldn't communicate," says Karen. "We had one common language, and that was praise music." In the Haitian orphanage, the boys had learned praise songs in English. During those first few months, Don played the guitar at bedtime while the family sang. "Now, they've been here five years and it feels like they've always been part of the family."

Karen notes that her multicultural family has enriched her writing. "Having different personalities in our family has been like living in a laboratory. Adoption has made me more compassionate in my novel-writing."

A Tapestry of Words
For Karen, bringing her characters to life is critical. "Each one has to have something that sets them apart." She outlines the plot before she begins writing, but gives herself permission to change things as the story unfolds.

"When I write, it's like watching a movie in my head," she explains. "It's a gift from God. I get an image of a story and I start filling it in, like a tapestry where you weave in all the threads, so that when you read it, you see it like a movie in your head, too."

The "movie" plays quickly for Karen; she drafts a 100,000-word novel in a week or two. During these intense drafting sessions, Karen spends 10 hours a day in her upstairs writing room. She relies on her husband, her mom, her sister, and friends to temporarily take over "taxi driver" responsibilities.

Karen's thankful she has the ability to write quickly. "I'm mostly in my life, and not in the life of a writer," she says. She and Don lead a weekly small-group Bible study at their church in Vancouver, Washington, and she attends her kids' theatre productions and keeps score at their sporting events.

"I'm mindful of the fact that our kids won't be around forever. I'll have no regrets that I fit time for them into my day," she says.

Karen hopes that the four or five novels she writes each year echo the same spiritual truths she's absorbing as a parent to both biological and adopted children.

Going into the adoption process, she knew that her family would have different colors, different countries, and different cultures. But she also knew that they would have the same Christ.

"We are all adopted children of Christ," she says. "Our primary heritage is found not in our ancestors or family genealogies or birthplaces but at the Cross, in Christ alone."

Visit Karen at www.karenkingsbury.com. For more information about adoption, visit www.adopt-usa.org. Laura Christianson (www.laurachristianson.com) is a writer from Snohomish, Washington, who specializes in adoption issues.

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