botany Archives - Karen Hugg

Apple, The Unique Apple in my Novel Began its Controversial Life in Kazakhstan, Karen Hugg, https://karenhugg.com/2021/09/28/kazakhstan-apples/ #apples, #HarvestingtheSky, #appleseason, #funfacts, #books, #magic, #mystery, #thrillers, #Kazakhstan

Since it’s apple season, I thought it’d be fun to offer some interesting facts about apples and Kazakhstan. For instance, did you know botanists believe apples first evolved in Kazakhstan in the Tien Shan mountains? Today, huge forests of apple trees stretch on for miles there. The trees, over the course of millennia, have cross pollinated like crazy, in turn bringing forth thousands of varieties. Apples range in color from yellow to green to russet to red. In size they […]

Books

Harvesting the Sky Hits Shelves in September!

July 10, 2021November 8, 2021

Hey everyone, Just a quick note to let you know my new novel Harvesting the Sky has a cover! Here it is above. I’m very excited. The talented Jessica Dionne, who created The Forgetting Flower, also designed this one. It’s ominous and threatening and mysterious and I love it. Here’s the jacket copy: Botanist Andre Damazy lands on the opportunity of a lifetime when he discovers a rare medicinal apple in Kazakhstan and brings back tree cuttings to his hidden […]

Why I Wrote a Novel About a Unique Apple: Excerpt

July 7, 2018March 22, 2024

During these last few weeks, I shared two posts about the origins of and botany in my novel about a unique apple, Harvesting the Sky. The first article covered how I merged issues of an emotional past with plants and the second, my inability to eat apples and subsequent fascination with them. This week I’m posting the final segment of this series with an excerpt from the book’s first chapter. It takes place in Kazakhstan while the rest of the novel, […]

Why I Wrote a Novel About a Unique Apple: Botany

June 29, 2018March 22, 2024

Last week, I wrote about the origins of my apple novel, Harvesting the Sky. I covered my resistance to putting plants in my fiction, how I developed a main character who was a composite of plant people I knew, and why I decided to set the story in Paris. The next step I needed to decide was the novel’s botany, what plant my main character, Andre, would be discovering. A Fascination With a Fruit I Can’t Eat As an adult, I’ve never been […]

Why I Wrote a Novel About a Unique Apple: Origins

June 21, 2018December 20, 2020

When I look back on the origins of Harvesting the Sky, my novel about a unique apple, I can’t believe how long it took me to discover something that was an obvious fit. But at the time, I couldn’t see it. For years, I resisted the idea of writing fiction about plants. By day, I worked as a gardener, designing and maintaining clients’ gardens and at night, I wrote gardening articles for fun. During graduate school at Goddard College, I’d […]