Judith Marie Austin

My first published books include a hardcover illustrated children's storybook and a series of nine softcover adventure books for the juvenile market: GlobalFriends Adventures.

Dazzled is my first Romantic Suspense although I have several more started.

I'm working on one now with a television cooking show chef as the heroine. The new producer of her show (and her ex-husband!) is murdered inside her home in the first chapter. She gets tangled up with two Chicago homicide detectives. One thinks she was the target and wants to protect her. The other thinks she's the murderer.

Another story I'm working on involves a high-powered Chicago-based advertising executive for a heroine. Her mother owns a bait and tackle shop in a tiny town in Northern Michigan. When her mother has to travel across the country to take care of a sick friend, my heroine baby-sits the tackle shop. She doesn’t know a psycho from her high school in Michigan is stalking her. An undercover U.S. Marshall from Chicago follows the psycho and tails her to her hometown where they both get snarled in a web of lies and misunderstandings, some humorous, some touching, some spine-tingling.

A fabulous, utterly memorable vacation in Ireland inspired another story about a Bed & Breakfast-owner heroine who has a nasty philanderer of a husband who dies almost before the story begins. With his death, a cousin from his Irish family, the hero, comes to America to represent the family at the funeral and investigate the family’s latest real estate holding, the B & B. Turns out the beast of a husband secretly sold the gorgeous, still being renovated B & B to his family for money to pay for an expensive trip with his mistress. The heroine doesn’t know she no longer owns the fabulous B & B with its glorious gardens and assumes the Irish lodger is just another guest. Not so. The story weaves on from there.

My favorite authors include Janet Evanovitch and Jennifer Crusie; both because they are so incredibly read-able, so humorous, and they both weave great stories. They inspire me to write more and more. I also love Diana Gabaldon and John Grisham for their complex story-telling abilities.

People ask me all the time why I write, and I tell them, "Because the artistic talent went to my twin sister Linda." But seriously, my dad used to thump out one-act plays on a manual typewriter. I guess I got it from him. I started with poems and moved on to short stories. Then I wrote a play, then another, then went to Grand Valley State University where I majored in advertising and public relations. And I spent years in advertising, marketing, promotion, and event planning and production. And then I wrote Dazzled.

Frankly, I can't remember when I wasn't writing. Can't think of a reason I wouldn't be writing.