Editing Jan Karon (section)

== Career ==
Janice, age 18, was on her own with her daughter Candace. She took a receptionist job at Walter J. Klein Co., a Charlotte advertising agency.  Bored with answering the phone, she submitted writing examples. Klein soon had her writing advertising copy.  In her early 20s, Jan married Bill Orth, a Duke Power chemist.  Orth was active with her in theater and the [[Unitarianism|Unitarian Church]].  By the late 1960s, Jan and Orth were divorced, and she married a third time, to Arthur Karon, a clothing salesman, and became Jan Karon.  Arthur moved his wife and her daughter to [[Berkeley, California]], where they lived for three years.

In California, Karon practiced Judaism, but she did not convert from Christianity. Karon wanted to be a novelist, and tried all through the 1960s.  When Karon's third marriage ended she returned to Charlotte and again worked in advertising. By 1985, Karon had moved to [[Raleigh, North Carolina|Raleigh]] and the McKinney & Silver advertising agency, where she had worked in the late 1970s.  Karon and Michael Winslow, a Mckinney designer, collaborated on a tourism campaign, interviewing artisans, musicians and others for print ads aimed at showing that North Carolina had other attractions besides theme parks and big hotels. One ad featured mountain musicians under the headline, "The Best Place to Hear Old English Music Is 3,000 Miles West of London." The campaign, which ran in ''National Geographic'' and other magazines, won the 1987 Kelly Award, the print advertising equivalent of the Academy Award.  Karon and Winslow split a $100,000 prize.

In 1988, Karon quit her job, traded her Mercedes for a used Toyota and moved to [[Blowing Rock, North Carolina]].  In Blowing Rock, Karon began writing Father Tim stories for the ''Blowing Rocket'' newspaper.  An agent circulated Karon's fiction to publishers, but got only rejections. In 1994, Karon herself placed her work with a small religious publisher, which brought out a volume titled ''At Home in Mitford''.  Karon kept writing, and employed her marketing skills to promote her book, writing press releases and cold-calling bookstores. But the publisher offered limited distribution and little marketing muscle of its own. Two more Mitford novels appeared. Sales remained modest.  Then Karon's friend Mary Richardson, mother of [[Carolina Panthers]]' owner [[Jerry Richardson]], showed ''At Home in Mitford'' to Nancy Olson, owner of Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh.  Olson felt there was a large audience looking for clean, well-written fiction. She sent Karon's book to a New York agent friend, who got it to Carolyn Carlson, an editor at [[Viking Penguin]] and daughter of a Lutheran minister.  Carlson faced opposition at Viking Penguin, a mainstream publisher unused to Christian fiction. But in 1996 the New York firm brought out Karon's first three titles as paperbacks. By the late 1990s, Karon's books were ''New York Times'' bestsellers.

In 2021 Karon founded The Mitford Museum in her former elementary school in Hudson, NC. The museum features family history as well as a wealth of information about her writing. Happy Endings Bookstore sells signed copies of her books along with Mitford-related items. The museum is open Wednesday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.