“In the pages of a book, we can be braver than we really are, we can go further than we’d normally dare, we can understand more than we know.”
Wise words from an author who has been writing for children, teens and adults for 25 years.
When she was growing up, Victoria resident Karen Rivers’ mom wanted her to have a “real job.” Although she always had her nose in a book, her parents didn’t see writing as a viable career option.
As a result, she got a degree in International Relations and planned to go to law school. The driven young woman was disappointed when she was waitlisted during a year when no one dropped out. But she was tenacious, and she switched her focus to pre-med. Unfortunately, a failing grade in calculus changed her plans again.
Then, in 1993, at the age of 23, she suffered a cardiac arrest as a result of an eating disorder.
“My life of constantly running forward to seemingly earn these ‘badges’ and do the things I was supposed to do came to a screeching halt,” says Rivers.
“A lifetime of undiagnosed and unmedicated anxiety all came rushing to the forefront in a time when those things weren’t talked about.”
An Unexpected Start
She moved back in with her parents and turned to writing as a stress release when she had trouble finding a job.
“I wrote an adult book called The Tree Tattoo because I needed an outlet,” she says.
“And it gave me the confidence boost I needed. I thought ‘Wow! I just wrote a whole book!’”
She adds that the book felt private to her, and she wasn’t ready to share it with the world, but she realized she could make a living if she wrote another.
“My next book was called Dream Water, and it is based on the tragic incident that happened at Sealand of the Pacific,” she says.
On February 20, 1991, Keltie Byrne, a 20-year-old marine biology student and part-time orca trainer, was dragged into the whale pool after a show and killed.
“I thought, ‘What if kids saw that happen? What would the results be?’”
She sent the book to Orca Book Publishers and received a call from founder Bob Tyrrell almost immediately saying they wanted to buy the book.
“I thought one of my friends was playing a joke on me and I hung up on him when he called,” she says with a laugh.
“He called back and said, ‘No, really! We want to buy your book.’ It changed my life!”
The next week, she sold The Tree Tattoo, a novel that delves into the heart of an incendiary, illicit love between a young woman and an older man.
“It seemed so incredibly easy. I thought that I would just write a book a week and be wealthy and successful. Like most things you try to plan in life, it didn’t work out the way I thought it would.”
She adds that the 26 other books she has written have posed challenges and taken much longer to publish than she thought. In fact, her next book Birdfish, which is set to come out in 2026, was sold in 2021.
Wonderfully Weird
Rivers says the theme that runs through all her books is “weird.”
“That is definitely the most common word that comes up in my reviews,” she adds.
“My brain wants to go to these weird places because that is the kind of book that I want to read. The books I live for are the ones that are beautifully written and surprise me. They aren’t necessarily commercially successful, but they are meaningful.”
She lists her strangest premise of a book as her middle-grade story Naked Mole Rat Saves the World. The book is about a middle school student who turns into a naked mole rat when she is anxious.
It seems “weird” is working for her. Her book Love, Ish was in the running for a Governor General’s Award in 2017.
She adds that although she recently shifted her focus to caring for her parents, she has started seven books in two years—three adult and four young adult.
“Writing is less what I do and more of a place I go to when real life gets stressful, I can go into the other half of my brain for a magical escape,” she says.
“I get to go to a world that I created with these characters that I control, and I get paid to do it.”
Her latest book An Implausible Premise came out in 2023 and is a touching young adult novel. In it, Hattie and Presley’s instant connection seemed implausible—almost impossible—but falling in love is exactly what they needed to escape the ghosts of their pasts. Both are grieving, living in worlds haunted by ghosts; both have a parent who’s out of sight, not out of mind; and both were forced to give up their Olympic dreams.
One Word at a Time
Rivers’ advice for anyone who has the desire to write a book but feels they don’t know how is simple:
“Nobody knows how to write a book,” she says.
“No matter how many books an author has written, every time they sit down to write another, they are reminded that they don’t know how. You just need to do it. One page or one word at a time.”
She adds that her process includes writing the first page and saving it and then reading, rewriting and adding to it.
“I start at the very beginning and catch up to myself and then keep going. I go back to the beginning every time,” she says.
“It is a longer process, but it means I don’t have a rough first draft like many writers do. I am redrafting every day.”
Rivers adds that one of the things that inspires her to keep writing is the fact that the stories she tells are emotionally honest.
“The world is often egregiously unfair. Things can seem impossible,” she says.
“Kids and teens get scared and sad in real life and when they are allowed to do so in the context of a book, it is a safe way to experience and talk about those feelings. It’s okay to have big feelings.
“Fiction makes us better, period. That’s what I believe; it’s why I read and why I write.”
Learn more about Rivers and her books at karenrivers.com.
Victoria Author Karen Rivers’ Top 5 Reads
• Still Life with Tornado by A.S. King
• Luster by Raven Leilani
• We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
• Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
• The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
