About Karina

Karina L. Fabian was born Karina Lumbert. She lived one of the seemingly rare childhoods, with loving parents in a happy marriage and a terrific sister who was also a playmate and friend. A shy, and thus often lonely, child, she poured her energies into study and graduated from South High in Pueblo in 1985 as Valedictorian and with honors from Colorado State University in 1989. Her academic skills aren’t particularly impressive to her now, however, after having met so many far more brilliant people who had average grades. Her husband is one of those people, and she’s constantly awed at how he thinks and what he can remember.

Karina served in the Air Force as a Signals Intelligence Officer for four years, training at San Angelo, TX, before being stationed in San Vito, Italy, and Misawa, Japan. She loved the areas, liked the people, but didn’t much care for her job. Later, she joined the Reserves as an Intelligence Officer and had a far better time. She did special projects in Misawa, established an intelligence cell for 20th Air Force Headquarters in Cheyenne, WY, and worked on various studies and reports while at Peterson AFB, CO. She left the Reserves to devote herself fully to her children.

She met Rob in San Angelo. He was an officer in Air Force Space Command assigned in nearby El Dorado Missile Warning Station. They fell in love in a day, were engaged in two months (because she made him meet her parents first), and married 9 months later. Courtesy of the Air Force, they spent their first two years of marriage an ocean apart, thus enjoying a 2-year intermittent honeymoon and learning how to really communicate. They joined up in Japan, where they had their first two children, Steven and Amber. Alex and Liam were born in Colorado, thus completing the set.

Karina has been writing all her life, but began making a serious career of it in 1996, after reading a Harry Turtledove novel and thinking, “I could be writing things like this!” She gave up reading for Lent, took up writing, and soon, God started rolling in the opportunities.

Her nonfiction credits make a long list, but she has written for Catholic diocese magazines (local events, clergy interviews, and a saints column that ran several years), local newspapers (news and features), national parenting and pregnancy magazines, writing magazines, and the radio show, the Osgood Files, through acfnewsource. (See short works) She also has written several craft books. (See Books.)

Her fiction credits are somewhat fewer, but equally diverse. She writes primarily fantasy and science fiction, but has also written mysteries, children’s, and “regular” fiction. Her short stories are published on-line and in print magazines. (See Short Works.) She and Rob have edited two religioius SF books: Infinite Space, Infinite God, and Leaps of Faith. She has two novels looking for print homes and is working on two more novels. (See Books.)

Karina started homeschooling her children with second grade for Steven and Amber. It started out as a one-year experiment, but they so enjoy it that the plan right now is to continue through high school.

100 Things about me

  1. I like my married name so much better than my maiden name!
  2. I love being a mom. I’m pretty good at it, too.
  3. Before I had my firstchild, I would have never believed that I’d love being a mom or that I’d be good at it.
  4. I birthed my last two babies at home--and loved the experiences!
  5.  My shortest labor was 45 minutes. (Amber, baby #2) My longest labor was 2 ˝ days. (Alex, Baby #3)
  6. I actually enjoy pregnancy and labor.
  7. I knew Rob 10 days before I realized I was in love.
  8. I freaked out and spent 45 minutes in the shower trying to talk myself out of it.
  9. I told him that night!
  10. Our first two years of marriage, he lived in Texas and I lived in Italy. Learning to communicate and work together at such distances laid the groundwork for a great marriage.
  11. I fall more in love with my husband every day. No joke.
  12. Rob and I each have our own allowances. We seldom argue about money.
  13. I love hot wasabi peas.  I like how they sting my sinuses.
  14. The first time I stopped taking my parents for granted was my Freshman year in college. After hearing some friends talk about their parents, I called mine and thanked them for being so unusually wonderful.
  15.  I homeschool my kids and love it.
  16.  Some days, I get terribly frustrated homeschooling and am ready to send them all to school and devote my hours to writing novels. I threaten to do it, but I never do. They’re great kids and are doing so well. Any problems they have with school work would just come home anyway.
  17. I could never teach public school. I’d hate it and probably get fired the first day.
  18. My first short story was in 4th grade about the Planet Gololoony. It had police machines that turned offenders upside down and shook them until enough spare change came out of their pockets to pay their fine. I was heartbroken when my teacher didn’t let me read it in class, choosing Audrey’s dream sequence story instead. (It was a good story, too.)
  19. I wrote my first novel in college. It was called The Miscria and featured a psychic college student who teleported to another planet and fell in love with an alien princess. I was heartbroken when no publisher accepted it. (Maybe Audrey was sending a manuscript around then….)
  20. A decade later, I re-read The Miscria and hated it. Older and wiser, I realized the character was too cool, so I gave him some real mental problems--enough to send him to an asylum. The book is now a trilogy and so much better.
  21. I feel sorry for Deryl for what I did to him for that trilogy.
  22. My favorite character to write about is my dragon detective, Vern. He’s cynical and proud, but always comes through for Good and God.
  23. My favorite story is a Vern mystery that combined a legend of fairies who fought as insects, ancient Egyptian gods, and the Plague of Locusts from Exodus. I was so stoked to be able to mix them all together and not have it come out stupid.
  24. One day, I want to turn Vern into a human for a story and watch him totally freak out!
  25. I love getting lost in my fantasy worlds.
  26. I hate getting found in my fantasy worlds by children who want me to help them find their lost YuGiOh cards
  27. I love being kissed on the cheek by one of my “littles.”
  28. I sometimes have problems sleeping at night or wake up and can’t get back to sleep. I usually try to write then.
  29. I don’t have a favorite color, but I hate beige in a house or car.
  30. My favorite dessert is brownies from a mix.
  31. Within a year of moving to Virginia from Colorado, I put on 40 pounds with no significant changes in diet or exercise. Can someone explain that?
  32. For three years, I’ve argued with my doc that there’s something wrong with my body and it was not my thyroid. He refused to believe me and my tests came back negative, so I gave up and saw a naturopath doctor. She put me on all kinds of supplements. I sleep and feel better when I’m on my supplements. My thyroid medication doesn’t make a lick of difference, so I stopped taking it.
  33. I don’t like to window shop.
  34. Every day, I find some way in which the Lord has blessed me.
  35. I have been known to sing “The Lord is Good to me” over the phone to strangers, like when the car repairman told me our transmission was out but we still had 8000 miles on the warranty. (With a Fredericksburg/DC commute, that’s about a month!)
  36. I have a friend who’s battling cancer, and it’s a constant inspiration to me how she gives her sufferings and her trust to God.
  37. Every time I read one of her husband’s progress reports, I cry because of the love and heartache I can hear in his words.
  38. I’m crying now just thinking about it!
  39. When I was pregnant with Alex (baby #3), I cried when I heard an Army commercial, the one that says, “We do more before 6 a.m. than most people do in a day.”
  40. I was an officer in the Air Force. It was not a good place for me.
  41. I was an officer in the Air Force Reserves. That was a terrific job!
  42. I left the Reserves because we moved to a new base where most Reservists were getting deployed. I had two toddlers and a baby and did not want to be deployed, nor did I feel right being part of the military when I wouldn’t make that sacrifice.
  43. I don’t regret leaving. I adore being home with my kids.
  44. I get very whiny and frustrated when an article is due. Sometimes, I have to force myself to pound out something.
  45. I often tell myself, “Just get that lousy first draft out and then we can fix it!” I often talk in split personality that way. It works for us.
  46. I have a hard time getting motivated to do anything in February. I have finally resolved to simply plan around that month.
  47. April and May are good months for me to get things done. I overachieve.
  48. After 3 years of interviewing priests and nuns, I find I’m tired of the same old questions, but the answers are almost always interesting.
  49. I’ve worked for a decade for a diocese I’ve never been in.
  50. I’ve lived in Italy, Japan, Wyoming, Colorado, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
  51. I’d love to live overseas again.
  52. I love moving. After three years in one place, I get restless.
  53. This tour of duty is the first one where we’ve lived more than three years. (We’ll be here five.) Rob and I are restless, so we repainted, tiled the floors, re-carpeted the steps and bought some new furniture. That should pacify our “house boredom” until we move.
  54. I love our tile! It’s terra-cotta red and goes great with the green walls and chili-pepper stenciling. We also have blue, gold, and green accent tiles along the thresholds, on two squares in the center of the tiled rooms, and on the backsplash. The whole effect is warm and Tuscan.
  55. We still read our children bedtime stories, even to the 12-year-old. Right now, we’re working on a book about dangerous sea creatures, Anne of Green Gables, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and Don Quixote. It takes hours to get to bed.
  56. I’m a cat person. Rob is not. In 1996, a kitten strolled up to Rob and started licking his chin. He insisted we keep it because “It thinks it’s a dog!” Elbereth has been queen of the house ever since.
  57. We’ve had four dogs: The first two were lab puppies that showed up on our doorstep when I was eight months pregnant. The shelter said they’d put them to sleep, so we kept them, but had to give them away when we moved. We named them Rif and Raf.
  58. In 2004, we got a beagle puppy named Angel. I’d fought for years against getting more dogs, then decided on a whim to drive us to the farm and get her. She was smart, but nervous and we gave her away to a sweet, quiet lady after she started snapping at the kids. We worked with our trainer for months before giving up on Angel. We loved her.
  59. Two months later, we got a rescue mutt named Layla. Layla is happy, passive, and long-suffering. She is the perfect dog for us.
  60. I have finished a basement, fixed broken plumbing and replaced pieces in my oven and dryer. (I shocked myself because I forgot to unplug the dryer.) Yet I leave changing light bulbs to my man.
  61. I have a Brookstone sound machine to help me sleep.  I like the natural sounds, but the man-made sounds designed to adjust your brain waves just annoy me.
  62. My first car was a '72 Honda Civic. I named it, once piled seven people in it, and drove it to college until I lost two engines with it. It’s still my favorite car.
  63. I now drive a Town and Country with cushy seats and a DVD player. I blame my husband for giving me his expensive tastes.
  64. When my husband and I got engaged, I told him I wouldn’t marry him unless he promised to get out of debt before we lived together. He paid off $16,000+ dollars in debt in two years.
  65. I get nervous when our credit card bill gets too high. My definition of “high” is far, far below the average American’s.
  66. My favorite charity is Food for the Poor.  Each year, they send us a catalogue. We can donate for specific gifts--from rice to houses--in a person’s name. I usually buy many of these as gifts to friends.
  67. I am tired of getting “gifts” from charities hoping I’ll donate out of guilt. I have enough notepads and return address labels, thank you. Use the money on your cause!
  68. My pet peeve is “heartwarming” or “call to action” e-mails that try to guilt you to forward them on. I will not annoy my friends with sappy stories. I do not believe passing it on will give me luck, blessings, or fortune, and I especially hate the implication that I’m less of a friend, citizen or Christian if I don’t forward their stuff.
  69. This number still gets a reaction out of me, usually annoyance about remembered high school jokes.
  70. I majored in Math in college, yet I cannot balance my checkbook.
  71. My favorite subject is history, but I’m not good at remembering names and dates.
  72. I’ve always wanted to be a writer.
  73. I love the TV show Firefly. My favorite scene is when Mal pushed a feisty minion into Firefly’s engine intake, grabbed the next minion and started his speech again. It cracks me up every time.
  74. I’ve had dark brown hair all my life. It’s long and wild.
  75. I’m waiting for it to go gray so I can try a new color.
  76. I’m actually excited to see gray hairs. They’re a very pretty silver.
  77. I have about seven gray hairs that show.
  78. Today, I learned that “some,” “several,” “one,” and “any” are pronouns!
  79. I had six years of public school grammar and never learned that.
  80. I do not think it will improve my writing in the least to know that.
  81. I never understood the purpose of diagramming a sentence. I have never used it in my writing career, and don’t intend to teach it to my kids.
  82. I used to be really good at it, though.
  83. My spelling has gotten worse since I started using a word processor.
  84. I am a cradle Catholic. In college, I explored other faiths, but Catholicism just felt right.
  85. I grew up in a home that had the television going 12 or more hours a day.
  86. It annoyed me even then.
  87. I feel my kids watch too much television, but I don’t enforce the times well enough.
  88. I’m learning to lighten up a little as a parent.
  89. I’m learning to come to terms with my middle-aged figure. Exercise is a low priority and God and my family love me as I am.
  90. I used to be a hard-core Trekker. I once dressed for a con as a tribble trainer.
  91. My best friend was the tribble.
  92. We wrote a poem about Klingon eating habits. To this day, we fall over laughing when one of us says, “It was still twitching!” Rob saw that poem in a con program, cut it out and still had it when we met two years later.
  93. My favorite saints are Sr. Monica, Patron Saint of Mothers; St. Anthony, Patron Saint of Missing Objects; and St. Zita, Patron Saint of Homemakers and Lost Keys. These saints get a lot of pleas from me, especially poor St. Anthony.
  94. I’m a notorious punster. Rob and I fell in love over puns and pizza. We give our children rewards for telling puns.
  95. When I rotate my shoulders, I can hear the vertebrae rub against each other. I think it’s a cool sound.
  96. I don’t have a favorite music anymore. I loved country in high school, rock in college, and Rob has expanded my tastes into just about everything from folk to classical.
  97. In the past few years, I’ve become allergic to shellfish and peanuts and can’t tolerate syrup. Can someone explain that?
  98. I get easily irritated when there’s too much static around me.
  99. I hate clutter. Every quarter, I try to go through the house and get rid of stuff we don’t need. That includes going through toys with the kids. I usually make them keep four and discard one.
  100. Every day, I am aware of the wonderful gifts of love that God has given me: my faith, my family, and my “fantasy.” I thank God for the wonderful life I have.