Karen Van der Zee

Wendela Kilmer (born 26 May 1947 in the Netherlands) is a globetrotting writer of romance novels. Since 1979, she published over 33 novels under a pseudonym Karen Van der Zee, and two novels as Mona Van Wieren. She received a RITA for Rhapsody in Bloom.

Biography Wendela Kilmer was born on 26 May 1947 in the Netherlands. She grew up with her three brothers, while she dreamed about visiting the exotic places that read in their books.

She met a globetrotting American in Amsterdam, who asked her to marry him in Rome, Italy. After giving it some thought Wendela went to Nairobi, and they tied the knot in a ten-minute ceremony in Kenya. After Kenya, they lived in the States for a while, then four years in Ghana, West Africa where not only their first daughter was born but her first Mills & Boon romance as well. Karen's husband's work as a development economist has taken them to several other countries. They lived in Indonesia, in Ramallah, the West Bank, again in Ghana, Armenia, which lies east of Turkey and north of Iran and back to the US.

They now live in France. Furthermore, they have three grown kids, who live in the States.