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Idaho Enterprise

Author Carla Kelly Visit Library

Award winning author, Carla Kelly, was a speaker at the Oneida County Library on Wednesday, October 19. Carla described how she became a writer, beginning with her slight stammer when a child. Because she knew she did not speak like her classmates, she listened to how they said things and tuned into differences in voice inflection and vocabulary.  Later in high school, her journalism teacher, of whom Carla was terribly intimidated, told her she could become a writer when she turned in a perfect paper. Throughout her life, Carla has observed people as she has lived in many places in the United States, including now in Idaho Falls.

Carla’s college degree is in history, which has influenced her writing of over 40 books and more short stories than she can count. While she is probably best known for her romance novels, Carla’s first love is historical fiction. Carla said that to write historical fiction, the author has to make the fictional characters “run up against” historical figures and events so as to make the fictional people seem as real as the historical people and places.  Using her own books as examples, Carla told about creating Sergeant Major Ramsey Stiles and having him meet President Theodore Roosevelt at the dedication of the entrance arch on the north side of Yellowstone National Park in 1903. Courting Carrie in Wonderland tells the story of the Army’s supervision of Yellowstone through the eyes of Sergeant Major Stiles and other fictional characters that interact with the Wylie Camping Company, a real company that provided an outdoor camping experience for early visitors to Yellowstone.

She also used her two historical fiction novels about the mine explosion disaster in Scofield, Utah, on May 1, 1900, that killed over 200 Welsh and Finnish miners to further explain how she used the real-life Jesse Knight to make her fictional characters, Della Anders and Welsh miner Owen Davis, seem real.

Carla’s latest work is comprised of two shorter stories combined into one book that is about World War II.  Until We Meet Again is based on real-life stories that Carla solicited through Facebook from people who told her how their parents met during World War II.  Carla was able to take a few of those stories and turn them into fictional accounts of the War and its impact on lives.

Refreshments were served while Carla signed copies of her books for attendees.  Carla has won two Rita Awards from Romance Writers of America, two Spur Awards from Western Writers of America, three Whitney Awards, and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times. Her books are available through Deseret Book, Seagull Books, and online.