She's never happier than talking about the fur trade or Indian Wars with Park Service cronies. Hobbies? She likes to crochet afghans, and read British crime fiction and history, principally military history. She specializes in writing about warfare at sea, and about the ordinary people of the British Isles who were, let's face it, far more numerous than lords and ladies. She also writes a weekly, award-winning column, 'Prairie Lite.'Ĭarla only started writing Regencies because of her interest in the Napoleonic Wars, which figures in many of her Regency novels and short stories. Carla is currently overworked as a staff writer at the local daily newspaper. (Carla Kelly is some cook.)Ĭarla's husband, Martin, is Director of Theatre at Valley City State University, in Valley City, North Dakota. They continue to provide feedback, furnish fodder for stories and make frantic phone calls home during the holidays for recipes. Grown now, the Kelly kids are scattered here and there across the U.S. The mother of five children, Carla has always allowed her kids to earn their keep by appearing in her Regencies, most notably Marian's Christmas Wish, which is peopled by all kinds of relatives. Her entire Indian Wars collection was published in 2003 as Here's to the Ladies: Stories of the Frontier Army. She was the second woman to earn two Spurs from WWA (which, as everyone knows, is all you need to ride a horse). Two of her stories, A Season for Heroes and Kathleen Flaherty's Long Winter, earned her Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America. (Or as she would be the first to admit, as serious as it gets.)Ĭarla wrote a series of what she now refers to as the 'Fort Laramie stories,' which are tales of the men, women and children of the Indian Wars era in Western history.

Although she had sold some of her work before, it was not until Carla began work in the National Park Service as a ranger/historian at Fort Laramie National Historic Site did she get serious about her writing career. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.Īlthough Carla Kelly is well known among her readers as a writer of Regency romance, her main interest (and first writing success) is Western American fiction-more specifically, writing about America's Indian Wars.

Reforming Lord Ragsdale by Carla Kelly