Carla Kelly

Last updated
Carla Kelly
BornCarla Sue Kelly
1947
United States
Occupation
Period1978–present
Genre
  • romance
  • historical fiction
  • history
Notable awards
SpouseMartin Kelly
Website
www.carlakellyauthor.com

Carla Sue Kelly (born 1947) is an American writer in the Regency romance genre. She is the author of over forty books and short stories. Her books are what romance readers call "keepers," i.e. books they keep in their private collections, and accordingly they can be hard to find. Renowned for what she calls "dukeless" regencies, her stories often revolve around ordinary people solving their own problems. While many Regency romances feature soldiers returned from the Napoleonic Wars, several of Kelly's books include soldiers and sailors actively involved in the Peninsular campaign and in the naval blockade that prevented France from invading England, bringing this war to life in an unforgettable way. However, her regencies only reflect a part of her writing interests. She also has a strong interest in the American West, which is reflected in her earliest published works and in her non-fiction. Since 2011, Kelly, who has a Mormon background, [1] has written five historical romance novels that focus on the lives of young Mormon women: Borrowed Light, Enduring Light, My Loving Vigil Keeping, Safe Passage, and One Step Enough.

Contents

Biography

Born in 1947, Carla Sue Kelly calls herself a navy brat. The daughter of a Navy Officer, she grew up overseas or on one coast of the United States or the other. She graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah where she studied Latin American history. She completed a master's degree at the University of Louisiana-Monroe, in American history, with a focus on the Civil War and Indian Wars.

In her varied professional career Kelly has worked as a ranger/historian with the National Park Service at Fort Laramie National Historic Site, and a ranger at Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site; a contract research historian for the State Historical Society of North Dakota and history instructor at university level. Kelly is a former staff features writer for the Valley City Times Record newspaper based in Valley City, North Dakota.

Kelly lives in Idaho Falls, Idaho. She is married to Martin Kelly, former Director of Theatre at Valley City State University, in Valley City, North Dakota, who is now retired. The couple has five grown children now located in various parts of America.

Literary influences

When interviewed by Lola Sparks in Purple Pens, Kelly identified the following writers as having influenced her:

In her author profile on the e-Harlequin site, Kelly says her three favorite fictional works have remained constant through the years, although their rankings tend to shift: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, The Lawrenceville Stories by Owen Johnson, and A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute. Her favorite historical works are One Vast Winter Count , On the Border with Mackenzie , and Crossing the Line. Her favorite crime fiction authors are Michael Connelly, John Harvey, and Peter Robinson.

Writing career

Kelly began writing Regency Romances because of her interest in the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). A major theme in her books is how war touches the lives of ordinary people. In surviving the effects of war and in helping other survivors her characters find in themselves qualities of strength and purpose not previously evident. They are quiet achievers influencing the world on small, personal stages, making a difference in their own lives and others ultimately by acts of kindness rather than daring. Kelly goes against the norms of the genre by focusing her attention not on the glittering world of London society and the social elite, but on the other 99.9% of the population occupying England. Her stories are distinguished by authentic, well-researched detail and lightened by a ready sense of humour.

Kelly has also written an acclaimed series of short stories about the men, women and children of Fort Laramie during the Indian Wars era of American history. In 2003 her entire collection of Indian War stories was re-published in Here's to the Ladies: Stories from the Frontier Army. Two of these stories A Season for Heroes and Kathleen Flaherty's Long Winter were awarded Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America.

Awards

Additionally, in 2022, her 2011 novel Borrowed Light was placed on the AML 100 Works of Significant Mormon Literature.

Bibliography

Benedict Nesbitt series

Channel Fleet trilogy

Borrowed Light series

Spanish Brand series

Stand-alone novels

Short stories

This list excludes articles written in her capacity of journalist or feature writer for various newspapers and magazines, primarily in North Dakota.

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julia Quinn</span> American historical romance author

Julie Pottinger, better known by her pen name, Julia Quinn, is an American author of historical romance fiction. Her novels have been translated into 41 languages and have appeared on The New York Times Bestseller List 19 times. She has been inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. Her Bridgerton series of novels has been adapted for Netflix by Shondaland under the title Bridgerton.

Mary Balogh is a Welsh-Canadian novelist writing historical romance, born and raised in Swansea. In 1967, she moved to Canada to start a teaching career, married a local coroner and settled in Kipling, Saskatchewan, where she eventually became a school principal. Her debut novel appeared in 1985. Her historical fiction is set in the Regency era (1811–1820) or the wider Georgian era (1714–1830).

Mormon fiction is generally fiction by or about members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who are also referred to as Latter-day Saints or Mormons. Its history is commonly divided into four sections as first organized by Eugene England: foundations, home literature, the "lost" generation, and faithful realism. During the first fifty years of the church's existence, 1830–1880, fiction was not popular, though Parley P. Pratt wrote a fictional Dialogue between Joseph Smith and the Devil. With the emergence of the novel and short stories as popular reading material, Orson F. Whitney called on fellow members to write inspirational stories. During this "home literature" movement, church-published magazines published many didactic stories and Nephi Anderson wrote the novel Added Upon. The generation of writers after the home literature movement produced fiction that was recognized nationally but was seen as rebelling against home literature's outward moralization. Vardis Fisher's Children of God and Maurine Whipple's The Giant Joshua were prominent novels from this time period. In the 1970s and 1980s, authors started writing realistic fiction as faithful members of the LDS Church. Acclaimed examples include Levi S. Peterson's The Backslider and Linda Sillitoe's Sideways to the Sun. Home literature experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s when church-owned Deseret Book started to publish more fiction, including Gerald Lund's historical fiction series The Work and the Glory and Jack Weyland's novels.

This is a list of the works of fiction which have won the Spur Award for Best Short Fiction:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regency romance</span> Subgenre of romance novels

Regency romances are a subgenre of romance novels set during the period of the British Regency (1811–1820) or early 19th century. Rather than simply being versions of contemporary romance stories transported to a historical setting, Regency romances are a distinct genre with their own plot and stylistic conventions. These derive not so much from the 19th-century contemporary works of Jane Austen, but rather from Georgette Heyer, who wrote over two dozen novels set in the Regency starting in 1935 until her death in 1974, and from the fiction genre known as the novel of manners. In particular, the more traditional Regencies feature a great deal of intelligent, fast-paced dialogue between the protagonists and very little explicit sex or discussion of sex.

Heather Graham Pozzessere is an American writer, who writes primarily romance novels. She also writes under her maiden name Heather Graham as well as the pen name Shannon Drake. She has written over 150 novels and novellas, has been published in approximately 25 languages, and has had over 75 million copies printed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jo Beverley</span>

Mary Josephine Beverley was a prolific English-Canadian writer of historical and contemporary romance novels from 1988 to 2016.

The Regency era in the United Kingdom is the period between 1811 and 1820, when King George III was deemed unfit to rule and his son, later George IV, was instated to be his proxy as prince regent. It was a decade of particular manners and fashions and overlaps with the Napoleonic period in Europe.

Jessica Rowley Pell Bird Blakemore is an American novelist. Under her maiden name, Jessica Bird, she writes contemporary romance novels, and as J.R. Ward, she writes paranormal romance. She is a three-time winner of the Romance Writers of America RITA Award, once as Bird for Best Short Contemporary Romance for From the First and twice as Ward for Best Paranormal Romance for Lover Revealed and Dearest Ivie, and her books have been on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Michele Bardsley is the pen name of Michele Freeman who is an American writer of paranormal and contemporary romantic fiction. Bardsley is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author and has published more than 40 novels, novellas, short stories, and articles since the publication of her first book in 1999. She has written young adult paranormal fiction under Michele Vail. She lives in Texas with her husband, four dogs, and two cats.

Roberta Helmer, under her pseudonym Christina Skye, was the best-selling American author of more than thirty-two novels in a variety of genres: romantic suspense, paranormal romance, as well as contemporary and historical romances. Many of her books have appeared on the USAToday and New York Times bestseller lists and the Publishers Weekly bestseller list. Her books have been translated into ten languages. Under her own name Helmer has written five non-fiction books about the classical Chinese puppet theater and traditional Chinese folk arts.

Brenda Hiatt is an American, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of romantic adventure novels, including traditional Regency romance, time travel romance, historical novels, contemporary humorous mystery, and most recently young adult science fiction romance. She has authored and published over 20 such novels in a writing career that started in 1988.

Pamela Wallace is an American screenwriter and author. She won an Oscar for co-writing the screenplay for the movie Witness. Wallace has also written 25 romance novels, under her own name and the pseudonyms Pamela Simpson and Dianne King.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RITA Award</span> Literary award for romance fiction

The RITA Award, presented by the Romance Writers of America (RWA) from 1990 to 2019, was the most prominent award for English-language romance fiction. It was named for the RWA's first president, Rita Clay Estrada. After not being awarded in 2020, it was replaced by the Vivian Award, which was awarded once in 2021.

The Whitney Awards are awards given annually for novels by LDS authors. Established in 2007, they are named after Orson F. Whitney, a prominent early member of the LDS Church. There are several categories for which novels may be nominated. The Whitney Awards are a semi-independent non-profit organization affiliated with the LDStorymakers, a guild for LDS authors.

Diane Farr is an American historical romance novelist. She is best known for her Regency romance, published with Signet Regency romances.

Signet Books was an imprint of the New American Library (NAL), which was established as an autonomous American publishing house after branching off from its British-based parent company, Penguin Books. Signet had the longest running Regency series, beginning in the late 1970s and ending in February 2006. It generally published three books each month, though this varied over the years. Signet also produced reissues, both of their own previous releases as well as those of other publishers.

Cheryl Bolen is an American author, educator and journalist. She is known for writing more than 30 historical romance and romantic suspense novels, many of them set among Regency aristocrats in early 19th century England.

<i>On the Way to the Wedding</i> 2006 historical romance novel by Julia Quinn

On the Way to the Wedding is a 2006 historical romance written by Julia Quinn, published by Avon. It is the eighth and final novel of Quinn's Bridgerton series set in Regency England and tells the story of Gregory, the youngest male Bridgerton sibling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Josi S. Kilpack</span> American novelist

Josi S. Kilpack is an American novelist. She has authored 26 books, including a 13 book culinary mystery series. She is the recipient of a Whitney Award from LDStorymakers, a guild for authors who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has been awarded the Best of State in fiction in the state of Utah.

References

  1. "Carla Kelly - Biography". Archived from the original on 2016-06-14. Retrieved 2016-06-07.
  2. "Winners". Western Writers of America. 2012-05-12. Retrieved 2022-05-10.
  3. "Winners". Western Writers of America. 2012-05-12. Retrieved 2022-05-10.