Karen Hall, an environmental engineer and writer, lives in the Black Hills outside Rapid City, SD, with her husband Jeff Nelsen and their cat Junior. Though she earned a Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Minnesota, she confirmed Garrison Keillor’s notions about English majors: she spent time as an editor, lifeguard, graphics designer, marketing executive, bank teller, secretary and cherry picker (really—Yakima Valley, Washington). None of them suited her well, so she went back to school for degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering, and spent nearly nine years working in Minnesota’s oil industry as an environmental engineer. She left to start her own environmental consulting business—and to devote more time to writing. Her first novel, UNREASONABLE RISK, published in 2006, is a thriller about sabotage in an oil refinery. She has recently finished the second in her environmental series, THROUGH DARK SPACES, set in the hard rock gold mining industry of the Black Hills. It’s available in both paperback and e-book formats. Karen is currently finishing a novel about infertility and working on her third Hannah Morrison mystery. Karen is also active in the community as a member of the Pennington County Planning Commission, a long-time member of both progressive women’s political action group Democracy in Action and of Dakota Choral Union, Rapid City’s community chorus. She is also president of the Black Hills Writers Group.