Word Magic: All About Books: A Glimpse Too Far: The Backstory by Karen Charles

A Pulse-Pounding Thriller Filled with Menace, Betrayal, and a Race Against Time…

A terrifying gift. A government cover-up. And a past that won’t stay buried. Elouise thought she had left the past behind. After a tragic accident, she woke with chilling ability to see glimpses of people’s pasts and futures. She’s spent years trying to live a normal life. But when a powerful senator pulls her into a high-stakes game of deception and control, she realizes her gift is no longer a secret—it’s a weapon. And he intends to use it.

She must make an impossible choice: play his deadly game or risk everything to expose the truth. Danger closes in. Now, Elouise is running for her life, hunted by those who will do anything to silence her. Who can she trust? The boyfriend who swore to protect her? Or the man who wants to own her gift—at any cost?

A Glimpse Too Far is a pulse-pounding thriller filled with menace, betrayal, and a race against time. Will the truth be uncovered before it’s too late? To order your copy, visit Amazon and BookBaby.

Book Excerpt

The warmth of the car’s heater wrapped around Elouise as she gazed out the window, watching the snow clouds gather like thick cotton above. Her blond curls bounced with excitement as she tugged at her velvet dress, ensuring it was smooth and perfect for the performance. This was her moment—the Christmas musical, her solo.

Beside her, Crystal, her mom, adjusted her scarf and smiled, noticing the twinkle in Elouise’s bright blue eyes. “Are you ready, Sweetheart?”

“More than ready!” Elouise grinned, her smile wide and full of joy. The eight-year-old’s energy was contagious, even pulling a small chuckle from her dad, Edward, as he carefully parked the car in front of the school.

“Let’s get inside before we freeze,” Edward said, huddling close to the family as they stepped into the sharp wind that whipped around them. They hurried toward the gymnasium, hunching their shoulders against the cold. Christmas carols could already be heard drifting through the entrance doors, filled with the warmth of families gathering, waiting for the performance to begin.

Inside, the air was alive with holiday spirit. Elouise’s heart raced as the lights dimmed and the music began to play. She stood backstage, her hands clasped, waiting for her cue. When it came, she stepped into the spotlight, her curls bobbing with every movement.

Her voice rang out clear and strong, each note perfect. The audience was mesmerized. Elouise had that rare ability to bring a room to a standstill with the purity of her sound. She sang her solo flawlessly. When she finished, the applause was thunderous. Elouise beamed, her eyes shining as she took her bow.

Afterward, as they left the gym, fat snowflakes swirled down from the sky, transforming their world into a winter wonderland. Edward gently guided Crystal and Elouise to the car, his arms around them as they squeezed together. The drive home was tense. The roads were slick with fresh snow, and the wipers worked overtime to clear the windshield. Edward kept a firm grip on the wheel, navigating cautiously around the bends. Elouise sat in the back, still humming the songs from the musical, her voice soft as the snow that continued to fall heavily around them.

Suddenly, headlights pierced the snowy darkness. From around the bend, an oncoming car swerved out of control. Everything happened in a blur: metal scraping, tires screeching, and the world flipping upside down. The car rolled once or twice before coming to a crushing halt.

Sirens filled the air as firemen and paramedics swarmed the scene, pulling them from the wreckage. Elouise lay motionless, her eyes closed, her curls tangled and limp. The paramedics worked frantically as they loaded her into the ambulance. On the way to the hospital, her heart stopped.

– Excerpted from A Glimpse Too Far by Karen Charles, BookBaby, 2025. Reprinted with permission.

A Glimpse Too Far: The Backstory

I spent most of 2020 working social media for two state senate campaigns. Politics is always fraught, but with COVID looming large, casting a shadow over everything we did, it was an especially hard year. Tensions and tempers were high, and being on social media, I had a front row seat to hatred-inspired trollish comments and messages that are the hallmark of online political discourse. Fueled by algorithms that segment us into echo chambers, we don’t talk to each other. We just try to score points.

At the end of that year, weary of social distancing and deeply saddened by all the hatred, I sat down to write a novel. I’ve written novels before, of course, but this time I wanted to make myself feel better. After staring at a blank cursor for a few minutes, I typed out three words: Write something happy. I gave Joy her name before I gave her a plot.

It’s hard to write a book that is tonally different from how you’re feeling. I recognized that early on, and I shifted my goal slightly to the idea of writing something hopeful. The key hope I wanted to develop? The idea that two very different beings can work together for a common purpose. That even when they disagree with one another, they listen and gift the other a simple benefit of the doubt: good intentions.

The idea that they would share the same body popped into my head almost immediately, and not quite out of nowhere. I’ve long been fascinated by stories of body sharing, uncommon though they may be. In fact, the biggest challenge I had early on is the simple truth that most of these stories involve aliens, and I wanted to write fantasy (although the line between these genres is fuzzy, as I will shortly demonstrate). I spun through notions of ghosts and spirits and quickly dismissed them as being tonally off. I wanted to write something more hopeful than dark, so this isn’t a ghost story, even if Joy briefly thinks it is in Chapter 1 (as she tries to figure out what’s happening to her).

I can’t remember the moment when writing about the Fae occurred to me. It wasn’t an obvious choice because Fae don’t normally possess people, but I had run into interpretations of Fae as aliens before, an interpretation that brought me full-circle back to my initial inclination. I did mention that the line between fantasy and science fiction is fuzzy, right? I even make this observation explicit in a brief getting-to-know-you exchange in Chapter 17:

“So … you’re an alien?” Joy asked. “That’s what you got out of my story?”

“I’m curious about your powers and how they work. I thought it was magic, but if you’re an alien, then maybe not?”

“What’s the difference?”

Once the notion of Fae as aliens clicked into place, the world sort of exploded in my mind. They’re not corporeal, they’re beings of energy, of light and sound, and their magic works through sound, through the Songs of the Fae. They can possess people … and animals and plants (although plant possession doesn’t come up in the book) … and some of them do this regularly. Some of them live in the real world, human lifetime after human lifetime, and some of them absolutely refuse to do so. This is the big rift between them. And where would incorporeal Fae hang out? Probably not somewhere where humans tend to live, so I put them on the frozen continent of Antarctica. An insight that, in a flash, had me reconnecting my interpretation with the traditional notion of the Winter and Summer Courts.

This was a fun story to write. At its heart are two damaged souls, one powerful but unable to trust, one trusting and in need of claiming power. Together, they work magic. I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it!

About the Author

Karen Charles is the author of Freeman Earns a Bike, a children’s book, and two thrillers based on true stories. Fateful Connections takes place in the aftermath of 9/11, and Blazing Upheaval takes place during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles and the Northridge earthquake. She has two businesses: a global company that trains international teachers to teach American English, and an Airbnb on a beautiful bay in Washington State, where she resides with her husband. Her latest book is the psychological thriller, A Glimpse Too Far.