Introducing Myself

If you already follow me and have for a while, you already know who I am, but semi recently, I’ve gained quite a few new followers online and a bunch of new readers. It just feels like a good time to reintroduce myself.

Hi, dear readers. My name is Kara Jorgensen, my pronouns are they/them, and I am a queer indie author who writes queer historical-paranormal romance books set [mostly] in the 1890s. In terms of queerness, I am a nonbinary or agender person who is a little masc leaning. I’m also asexual, omniromantic (or biromantic, both apply). My partner is a trans woman who I have been with for over twenty years, and we have two dogs that we love dearly. Online, I tend to talk a lot about queer books, queerness, and how that intersects with being chronically ill or neurodivergent. Being autistic is central to my identity since it influences every aspect of my life. It’s has lead to some of my favorite personality traits, but it also has gifted me with debilitating anxiety and OCD at times. And if you follow me long enough, you will hear me complain about my autoimmune conditions as well (sorry, not sorry for complaining about my allergies and gut problems). I am a complex creature who often feels like a bunch of comorbidities in a trench coat.

The good thing is that I love learning about medical stuff. Medical history and diseases are some of my special interests and have been since I was in high school. Growing up, I wanted to be a doctor, but in college when my autoimmune problems were at their worst, I realized I probably couldn’t handle the 24/7 schedule of a medical residency (but still finished a BA in biology as well as literature). Instead, I became a writer and writing professor. I earned an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing and have published eleven novels thus far. Currently, I teach at universities as an adjunct English professor, mostly teaching College Writing (freshman writing), creative writing classes, and running the university’s literary magazine. While I wish that I taught full-time, it leaves me time for writing and can be worked around my chronic issues and neurodivergence.

Writing has been the one thing in my life that has been a constant since I was ten years old. My first “real” stories were self-insert Sherlock Holmes stories that were very dramatic. Sherlock Holmes was always getting shot and needing to be nursed back to health. After that, I went through a brief Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicle fanfic stage before moving into my own works. All of which were very dramatic and involved a lot of characters being sad, broody, and injured. Oh, and queer. The stories slowly got queerer and queerer with time. My first published book, The Earl of Brass, started out as my senior final project in college, which was then expanded when I was in graduate school. Looking back on it, I think it’s a highly flawed hot mess, but I tell myself keeping it available is a way to see how much I have grown since 2014. It’s also nice to see the things that set my books apart from others even in those early books.

Since then, I have published eleven full-length novels and several short stories. The books that are most well-known and most read are my Reanimator Mysteries books, starting with The Reanimator’s Heart, which are about an autistic necromancer who accidentally reanimates the man he loves after he’s murdered. From there, they team up to solve his murder. It ends happily, and there are four books in the series about these characters. My books tend to be on the Gothic side, but Gothic ala Guillermo del Toro or The Addams Family. Ones where you romance the darkness rather than being scared of it. Anne Rice, Tim Burton, The Brontes, Guillermo del Toro, KJ Charles, Cat Sebastian, and Edward Gorey have been major influences on my work, but at heart, I am a romantic and it shows. If you read my books, you can expect some sex scenes. No matter what though, the focus will always be on the emotional intimacy between the characters and how their neuroses mingle and can be soothed by the other person.

Some other random things about me, the lightning round:

1. I am a foodie. I absolutely love trying new food and making new recipes. One day, I would love to get my hands on Vincent Price’s cookbook. I love sushi, Japanese food in general, cheese of all kinds, and food from the Maghrab (grape leaves are soooo good)
2. I collect plushies- mostly Squishables. I have always been a plushie person (a very autistic trait, iykyk). My favs are the moths, coffees, and bees. My partner loves dolls and has quite a few Blythe and Monster High dolls.
3. I love stationery. I am a sticker and marker person. I do quite a bit of bullet journaling, so I mostly use my supplies to do that. My partner also steals them to do art.
4. My favorite step of the writing process is research. I could sit and research random things in my books forever. I often have to stop myself and make myself actually write because I could continually put things off to learn more. It’s the academic in me. I just always want to learn more.
5. If possible, I want to be the avatar of crafts, aka I want to learn them all. I do plastic canvas, cross stitch, crochet, and plenty more, but I would love to make rugs or stained glass and take more pottery classes in the future.
6. Favorite authors in no order: KJ Charles, Jordan L. Hawk, Cat Sebastian, Nghi Vo, P. Djeli Clark, Rebecca Roanhorse, Anne Rice, Anna-Marie McLemore, T. Kingfisher
7. My dream jobs if I didn’t have to worry about paying for additional schooling or the job market: beekeeper, working in a museum, archaeologist/paleontologist, owning a cafe or store where local artists could sell their stuff, being a writing professor full-time.
8. My dogs are my babies. I love them vastly more than most people. They’re my constant companions, my dog children, the greatest source of anxiety (because they can’t tell me what’s wrong), and a source of love and fulfillment which I hope they feel is reciprocated from me.
9. At heart, I am a little Goth. I love everything spooky and dark, but I am also a marshmallow who loves bright colors and comfy clothes. As much as I would love to be a sexy vampire, I am more like a rainbow plague doctor plushie.
10. In my family, I’m the annoying political killjoy. I am nowhere near perfect, so I try to make sure I am always learning, growing, and listening to other marginalized people. Masking is also a priority to me as I am covid conscious and do not want to add more conditions to my collection of disorders. I’d also feel really guilty if I was sick and gave it to other people.