Bio
J.A. Jance is the NY Times bestselling author of more than sixty books in four different series—
J.P. Beaumont, Joanna Brady, Ali Reynolds and the Walker Family. Born in South Dakota and raised in Arizona, she currently makes her home in Seattle, Washington. She says on her website that, “As a second grader in Mrs. Spangler’s Greenway School class, I was introduced to Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz series. I read the first book and was hooked. I knew from that moment on that I wanted to be a writer.”
JUDITH’S INTERVIEW
LYNN: What is it about writing murder mysteries that drew you to them as a career?
JAJ: I started out reading Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys before graduating to John D. McDonald’s Travis Magee. When it came time to write my own, it made sense to write what I liked. Forty plus years and sixty plus published novels later and that strategy is still working.
LYNN: Mysteries can be complicated and depend on a fair amount of subterfuge. Were you nervous when you first embarked on this journey that you could pull off writing a credible mystery?
JAJ: When I wrote Until Proven Guilty, the first J.P. Beaumont book, I was well aware that I had zero experience in law enforcement, so I consulted with a long-time Seattle PD officer. After finishing the manuscript, he was one of my beta readers. When he called me up after reading it, his first words were, “You made me cry.” That’s when I knew I could do it. On September 10, Den of Iniquity, Beaumont # 26 went on sale. He and I have been author and character for more than forty years.
LYNN: Do you have a specific process for plotting your clues and hiding the killer?
JAJ: I don’t necessarily hide the killer. Sometimes s/he is front and center the whole time. The question is how is the baddie going to get what’s coming?
LYNN: What kinds of tricks do you use to increase tension in your stories?
JAJ: I don’t believe I use tricks. In the course of the story, someone has to be in jeopardy. The danger that person is in creates its own kind of tension. Because I write series, there’s usually some crisis in one of the on-going character’s’ lives as well. That too creates tension.
LYNN: How do you decide on the central crime of the story, i.e. how the person is killed and why?
JAJ: As I create stories, I’m telling them to myself as I go. I often start with someone dead and spend the rest of the book trying to figure out who did it and how come.
LYNN: What’s the toughest thing you’ve had to research or write about?
JAJ: Learning about AI to create the character Frigg in the Ali Reynolds books. Frigg was ahead of her time when I created her, but Frigg-like AI systems are becoming more and more of a reality.
LYNN: Can you describe an example of something you had to research for a book that would be particularly interesting to readers?
JAJ: Research is such an integral part of what I do every day, that I really can’t think of one thing in particular.
LYNN: What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made?
JAJ: Listening to my first husband, a wannabe writer, who told me there was only going to be one writer in our family, and he was it. He was right about there being only one writer, but it definitely wasn’t him. He never published anything. Consequently, I didn’t sit down to write my first book until after we were divorced.
LYNN: What aspect do you enjoy most about writing your stories?
JAJ: Writing the “banana peel.” The first 20% of any given book is usually the most difficult part to write. The next 40 to 50 % is generally like trudging through deep mud. The last part of the book, the banana peel, is the part where everything is in place, and it’s a race to the finish line.
LYNN: What’s something about yourself that most people don’t know?
JAJ: I’m six-one. When I stand up people often say, “You don’t look that tall on your books.” Hello! Author head shots are usually taken when authors are sitting down.
To My fans:
I used to say I could never be Sue Grafton when I grew up because I could never write twenty-six books about the same character.
Well, guess what? Forty-one years after meeting J.P. for the first time while traveling by train from Seattle to Portland, Den of Iniquity, Beaumont #26, goes on sale September 10, 2024.
The character Kinsey Milhone tended to stay in the Seventies where she was most comfortable. For me, the Seventies weren’t all that great, so when Beau and I began our fictional journey together in the early eighties, and once Avon Books let me know I was writing a series, I decided that he and I would age together, which we have. I’m now pushing eighty, and so is he.
Some books are more fun to write than others. Writing this one was an absolute blast. For one thing, there are pieces of me lurking in this book. Beau didn’t actually start walking on a regular basis until he met Lucy, his first Irish wolfhound in Sins of the Fathers. Blog readers know that getting my daily steps has been an important part of my real-life story for a long time. My current streak comes in at 1001 consecutive days of getting at least 10,000 steps a day.
In Den of Iniquity, when Beau’s lanky 18-year-old grandson, Kyle, walks into the story, Blog readers will instantly recognize my own lanky grandson, Colt. They’ve been hearing about Colt’s adventures for years.
Yes, there is a murder mystery in this new book. Beau is tasked with tracking down a serial killer. For me, though, the real fun came from Beau's and Mel’s sometimes misguided attempts to bridge the generation chasm between two seventy-somethings and the runaway teenager who has unexpectedly decided to come live with Grandma and Grandpa.
That’s one of the joys of writing a series as opposed to stand-alone books. I’ve had a chance to watch these characters change and grow over the years. For me those back stories are sometimes more interesting than the mystery itself.
Now back to the business at hand. The four Den of Iniquity events that are scheduled--three live in Washington State and one virtual--are listed on the schedule page of my website, at https://www.jajance.com/.
If you can’t see me in person to have a book signed, you can always have a signed DOI bookmark by sending a business sized self-addressed envelope to me at J.A. Jance, PO Box 766, Bellevue, WA 98009.
All I can say is, I hope my fans enjoy reading Den of Iniquity as much as I enjoyed writing it. Happy reading.
JA Jance
Link to Den of Iniquity: https://tinyurl.com/mwd3z36y
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