Karen Livock

Karen is an interior stylist and busy mum of five. Until two years ago, she enjoyed a corporate career as an HR Director, and she still works part-time as a freelance HR consultant today. However, in 2022, she formed Surfhouse Property Staging, and now spends most of her time helping to maximise the potential of other peoples’ properties through interior design and home staging.

Her first novel, Shadows Over the Fjord, is eight years in the making.

This is a story from the heart. A story that primarily sets out to spotlight the sheer determination of the Norwegian people during the German invasion of WWII.

Set in two time periods: London 2017 and Norway 1940, it has at its core a love story, which sadly has no happy ending. However, after eight years of research and having delved into the lives of real people, she has created characters that, for her, have come to life. It is with these characters that she is able to write about the impact that the German invasion had on ordinary Norwegian citizens, and she has tried to showcase the courage, strength, determination, and ingenuity displayed in the face of the atrocities they had to endure.

Norway at this time was not the wealthy nation we know today, and yet many of its people stood in absolute defiance of the German oppression. The resistance movement grew, and the story tells of the lengths ordinary people went to, to fight back.

As with many stories, there are stories within the story, and in this one, she has created subplots of deception, collaboration, infidelity, and personal struggle under the weight of expectation.

Her family originates from the Drobak area of Norway, and the smallholding at the heart of the story is where they lived and worked.

The research she has done and the visits she has made have helped her to understand the impact and the legacy the German occupation had, and by weaving together historical facts, family stories and fictional characters, she hopes to bring to everyone's attention much of what actually happened to a neutral country, in what is our very recent history.