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About

Welcome to my online home! My name is Karen Phillips and I am a writer living in Pembrokeshire. I have lived across the world, from Mexico to Turkey but born and bred here in the far west of Wales I always return home – the blood calls me back, at least for a while.

This site started nearly a fifteen years ago when I lived in the village of Kirazli in Aegean Turkey (hence the name), it has been through various incarnations since. When, inevitably, I have to again rewrite this website I always leave this page until last because it is the hardest page to change.

I am lucky enough to live here in a beautiful peaceful valley with my partner, my rescue dog – Emma – and a Norwegian Forest Cat with a bad attitude.

I write, I photograph things, I get grumpy if not regularly dipped in sea water and I love feeding people. Other obsessions come and go over time but the writing never ends.

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The Life Before Now....

In 2004 my late husband and I gave up our respective careers and wandered off around the world building unusual stuff; from a villa on a Caribbean island to a boutique hotel in Turkey to our last project, a complete rebuild of a stone village house in Kirazli Village in Aegean Turkey.

Just after we had finished the house my husband died, very suddenly, and I lost my best friend, the better half of me and my inspiration.

For years afterwards I stayed on in Turkey; I ran a small boutique holiday rental and I wrote, lots, from creative writing to business advice to property advice to travel articles. Have broadband, will sell words!

Phil 2007This is Phil, he built this site originally. He died in 2008 and he taught me pretty much all the important stuff I will ever need to know. He left this life too soon but he had so much fun during his time here.

This site is his no matter how much I hack it around now and in the future. And somewhere he is laughing himself sick over my clumsy editing attempts!

I miss him but I can still see him, laughing in the pool, laughing in the light, laughing always.

I still think I am lucky, for all we did and all we found and for being granted a life less ordinary.