Things about me you might need or want to know:

  • I lived and worked in France for 3 years (and still visit frequently), and speak French reasonably well. Not perfectly. So there’s some (not too much) French in both The Paris Effect and Paris Ever After. Don’t worry, it’s all explained.
  • Very few of the events in my novels happened to me personally (thank goodness). Yes, I have had my purse stolen. Yes, I’ve been stalked. But the scary catacombs scene in The Paris Effect is fortunately not based on personal experience. And I’ve never met anyone like Margaret. But I would like to.
  • Speaking of the catacombs, everything my characters see and experience there is based on fact. (It’s all about research!)
  • A FEW of the dieting rules in The Paris Effect are my own personal dieting rules. Most, however, are intended to be clearly crazy. Please take with huge grain of salt.
  • In 2009, I published a career-advice-book-slash-memoir, The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl: Real-Life Career Advice You Can Actually Use (Running Press).
  • Speaking of career advice, for a long time I wrote a weekly jobs advice column for The Seattle Times. You can check out the archives here.
  • I don’t care for the sun, so it’s a good thing I live in the cool and cloudy Pacific Northwest.
  • At one point I lived in Phoenix, Arizona, where the non-Paris parts of The Paris Effect are set. Paris Ever After takes place entirely in Paris. Other places I called home: Virginia, Washington DC, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, and now Washington State.
  • Finally, my novels are published under K. S. R. Burns, my “fiction name.” All my non-fiction is under Karen Burns.