Kathleen Ripley Leo
Kari Wolf, whose nom de plume is Kari Charsper, has written and published a novel, The Starliner Murders, that is so good Kirkus Reviews gave it the prestigious and hard to get “Get It!” Award. From Kirkus Review: “If the Kirk-Spock era starship USS Enterprise had a few spinner racks of paperbacks in the lounge for recreational crew consumption, this would fit right in.”
Kari Wolf’s writing journey began with screenplays 15 years ago, with more than 15 written, several of which placed as finalists in multiple screenwriting contests. Three of them were collaborated on with a story expert from Disney, as a trilogy. That experience was an eye opener on how risk averse Hollywood is to writers breaking into the industry, so her writing craft grew to novels, with the engaging prospect of creating lasting characters and plotlines to draw in her readers in the broadest way possible. The Starliner Murders began as a screenplay, and grew. Her character Avei Themis investigates brutal murders and killers throughout the galaxy. This novel focuses on the starship Delphi trapped in a wormhole while a murderer kills passengers using alien spiders and their venom. There will be five in the novel series, the second one will be published in 2026.
Why science fiction? As a child she lived near Bozeman, Mont., and spent countless hours lying on the ground mesmerized by the big sky and the bountiful stars, making up story after story of alien planets, dreaming about alien races and how they lived, and what kind of trouble they could get into.
Kari’s background includes four years in the Navy, attaining the rank of Petty Officer 2nd Class. Her deployments between Maryland and California took her through Arizona, and she fell in love with the desert and knew this was where she was destined to live. After retiring from the tech industry, where she worked at Microsoft and Amazon, PebbleCreek drew her in with its Creative Arts Center, where she also creates wood and stone carvings, fiber clay sculptures, pottery, oils, and watercolors. Kari is a full-time resident and visits her daughters and son-in-law in the Seattle area frequently.
Kari’s writing process takes over her entire day, and she reveals that her characters tell her what to write! She doesn’t settle for commonplace plots and is not afraid to go on the dark side, especially in The Starliner Murders.
She writes under the name of Kari Charsper, which is the combination of her two sweetheart
fur-babies. Charlie is a rescue dachshund mix and Jasper a rescue Chihuahua mix.
The Starliner Murders by Kari Charsper can be found at Amazon as a paperback and ebook and Kobo as an e-book. It is also available at the PebbleCreek Expressions Gallery.