Stray Voltage in the Media
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“Pub Day: Karen Garloch, Stray Voltage,” by Tommy Tomlinson, The Writing Shed [blog], September 22, 2026. Q&A with Karen and the author of The Elephant in the Room and Dogland.
Tommy: This novel is deeply rooted in a small-town Indiana farming community. How similar is the setting in the book to the life you grew up in?
Karen: It’s basically the same. The story, the name of the town, and the characters in Stray Voltage are fictional, but many of the scenes and traditions come directly from the German Lutheran community in southern Indiana where I grew up. Take the county fair. When I was young, my 4-H friends and I looked forward to that week every summer, and even though I didn’t exhibit animals, I spent lots of time hanging out in the cattle barns. Like Janie in the book, I was a fair queen candidate myself in 1969. (I didn’t make it to runner-up, much less queen.) The one-room parochial school in the book is like the one where I spent my first seven elementary grades. And the butchering scenes are based on my experience. My parents and relatives helped each other butcher cows and pigs every winter, so we’d have plenty of steaks, hamburger, and sausage to eat for the rest of the year.
From Southern Lit to Midwest Values: Author Karen Garloch on telling the stories we overlook, by Linda K. Sienkiewicz [blog], September 17, 2026. Q&A with Karen and the author of Love and Other Incurable Ailments.
Karen Garloch asks: Why is there such a rich mystique surrounding Southern literature, but we rarely talk about Midwestern literature in the same way?
After I met Karen at the Regal House Publishing conference in Chicago, I became curious about her writing. Her debut novel, Stray Voltage, captures the rhythms of rural Indiana with remarkable authenticity, exploring family, community, faith, and the values that shape so much of the Midwest.
In this installment of my What, Why, How series, Karen shares how a decades-long journalism career led her to fiction, why she felt compelled to tell this story, and the writing practices that carried her from first draft to finished novel.
“Join Karen Garloch on her journey from newspaper reporter to novelist!” by Lily Iona MacKenzie [blog], September 2026. Q&A with Karen and the author of Curva Peligrosa.
Lily: Why do you write?
Karen: I write because I can’t not write. I write because I love words and stories. I write to figure out what I think or to work out problems. Since I was in sixth grade, I’ve kept a diary of each day’s activities and notes on my feelings about what happened. These calendars and journals fill more than half a dozen boxes in my closets at home, and I refer to them often if I can’t remember when something happened or how I felt about it. If I don’t document my days, I almost don’t feel like I’ve lived. I take notes all the time, when I attend a speech, when I’m on a sight-seeing tour, when I’m reading a book. I spent 45 years as a newspaper reporter, writing stories about other people. So, it wasn’t much of a stretch when, after I retired, I turned to fiction. Six years later, I’m celebrating the release of my first novel, Stray Voltage.