What does an author do after she’s closed the chapter, as it were, on the last installment in a six-book series she worked on for more than 30 years?

Well, if that author is Jean M. Auel, creator of the Earth’s Children series, she takes a needed break — a break from writing, that is.

At 76, the Portland author may have temporarily put down her pen, but she still makes appearances at literary events such as The Nature of Words Festival in Bend.

The five-day series of workshops, readings and more gets under way Wednesday evening. Auel is scheduled to do a reading Thursday at the Tower Theatre and give a Saturday lecture at Hitchcock Auditorium at Central Oregon Community College. She’ll also be on hand for a short reading at Saturday evening’s author dinner (see “If you go”).

While at the festival, Auel will receive the Caldera Special Recognition Award. Previous winners of the award include Barry Lopez and William Kittredge.

“Well, she’s only sold 40 million books worldwide,” says a chuckling Robert McDowell, executive director of The Nature of Words. “I can’t think of a single author I know who wouldn’t give some part of their anatomy” for those kinds of numbers.

“Forty million?” he adds. “That’s a lot. So it’s going to be fantastic to host her and have her here, and celebrate her life as an Oregonian and the contribution she’s made to the literary life of the state and the Northwest. Very exciting to have somebody of that caliber.”

Depending on your reading interests, you may or may not instantly recognize the Earth’s Children brand. However, chances are very good you’ll recognize the title of the book that launched it: “The Clan of the Cave Bear,” published in 1980. The book fell into the genre of speculative period fiction, that period being about 30,000 years ago.

“The Clan of the Cave Bear,” which was made into a 1986 film (Auel is not a fan), introduced readers to a young Cro-Magnon girl named Ayla, taken in by a group of Neanderthals, a subspecies that overlapped with early modern humans before going extinct.

The next few books followed in quick succession: “The Valley of Horses” in 1982, “The Mammoth Hunters” in 1985 and “The Plains of Passage” in 1990. Twelve years would pass before “The Shelters of Stone” was published in 2002. Finally, “The Land of Painted Caves,” in which Ayla has reached her mid-20s, saw the light of day in 2010.

When she began writing “The Clan of the Cave Bear,” she told The Bulletin, “I just started out with the idea for a story. It’s always just been story-driven. It’s the story of a girl who’s living with people who are different. They thought she was the one who was different.

“I didn’t even know it was going to be pre-history until I started doing some research and realized, yes, there was a time when both Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon shared the same territory,” she said. “It was Ice Age Europe. I thought, ‘Hey, that’s fascinating. That could make for a very exciting work of fiction.’”

Auel began researching and writing at her kitchen table late at night.

“I tend to be a night writer,” Auel said. “I really am a night person. Oftentimes, I’d see the sun come up, and then go to bed. I’d write all night long. It’s comfortable for me. I can be on a day schedule, if I have to be, like when I was getting my kids off to school or doing promotion for the books.”

However, give her 48 hours off from daylight demands, “and I’m right back on nights again,” she said.

Auel raised three girls and two boys.

“You know, families don’t get smaller,” she said. No kidding: In addition to her five adult children, she now boasts 15 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

“It’s wonderful, but while I love to hold babies in my lap, I am not good for baby-sitting. I don’t have the energy anymore,” she said. “I love to be around them. I love to look at them. I love to hold them once in awhile, but I’m not into changing diapers. It’s like, ‘Been there, done that.’”

‘Crown Jewels’ of caves

Auel has had the privilege of going inside a few of what she calls the “Crown Jewels” of caves in France and Spain: Chauvet, Lascaux and Altamira. The three contain paintings tens of thousands of years old.

“Those are the three most beautiful, decorated caves,” she said.

They’re caves “that I go in, and I start to look, and I start to cry,” Auel said. “That’s some of the most accomplished art you’ll ever see.”

Experts, she said, used to associate the quality of the drawings with certain dates and groups that may have lived or traveled through the regions.

“They’d say if it was not as well done, if it was more crude, then it was (from) earlier,” she said. “My feeling was, ‘No, people have different levels of skill.’ I never did go along with that particular idea.”

Travel for research was standard during much of her career, and she’s spread the wealth with her family and friends.

Last Christmas, Auel took 49 family members and friends on a Caribbean cruise. On one trip to Africa, she brought along 32 loved ones: “I brought my children and grandchildren, 32 of us, to Africa to see the animals,” she said. “And I tell you, when you see those lions’ faces, it’s the same as what’s in that cave.”

Rather than write six books back to back — some of them were 650, 700 pages long — Auel said she would take time between each for rest and research.

“I tend to take breaks. Let’s face it, I have long books. They take a bit of time to do,” she said. “I’ve been taking a break since the last book. I just feel like it’s time. I spent 30 years to do six books. But it’s more than just six books, because, my husband figured out, It’s about a million and a half words.”

Though she’s wrapped up her Earth’s Children series, Auel allows for the possibility that she’s just on another break.

“In my head, I’m still thinking about (the series).” Completing it was not “joyful,” she said. “It was in a sense; it was a relief, because I spent so much time at it. But there’s still so much more I could do.

“And I may. I just may decide it’s time. I’m 76, but I’m still there. I may just decide to write some more since I have quite a bit more material that I could write from.”

If you go

What: Author Jean M. Auel at The Nature of Words

Details:

• 7 p.m. Thursday — Guest author reading with Sherwin Bisui, Thor Hanson, Tracy Daugherty and Jean M. Auel at the Tower Theatre, 835 N.W. Wall St., Bend; $25

• 11 a.m. Saturday — Jean M. Auel lectures on “Thirty Thousand Years Ago” at Hitchcock Auditorium, Pioneer Hall, Central Oregon Community College, 2600 N.W. College Way; $40

• 5:30-9:30 p.m. Saturday — Gala author dinner, Century Center, 700 S.W. Century Drive, Bend; friends table, $75 per person; author table, $110 per person.

Contact: www.thenatureofwords.org or 541-647-2233