Morley Swingle

Hi! This is my first web venture (I know, I know--I'm WAY behind the times), so it's pretty spare. Feel free to look around, though. I've nearly finished my second novel, so hopefully there will be more here soon....

Karen Hall, an environmental engineer and writer, lives in the Black Hills outside Rapid City, SD, with her husband Jeff Nelsen and their two cats, Rocky and Junior. After getting an English degree at the University of Minnesota, she spent time as an editor, lifeguard, graphics designer, marketing executive, bank teller, secretary and cherry picker (really—Yakima Valley, Washington). None of them fit 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. 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. Ms. Hall has also published several short stories and travel pieces. She is currently at work on a sequel to Unreasonable Risk, set in the hard rock gold mining industry of the Black Hills, and also on a novel about infertility.