About Me

I grew up in a small town in Iowa, living a 'Beaver Cleaver existence' (as described by one friend). Riding bikes to the swimming pool, fishing in farm ponds, popcorn on the courthouse lawn while listening to the local band playing, square dancing in the intersection outside the library. A typical, Midwestern existence.

College beckoned and continued to beckon for many years. I earned five college degrees (B.A., M.A., B.S., M.S., A.A.S.), usually while working at a University (and they paid the tuition -- such a deal!) My fields of study were varied: Information Science (with an emphasis in artificial intelligence), English Literature (British and American), and Horticulture. Academics figures in many of my novels.

I was able to parlay the education into job interviews, which landed me my first technical writing job, then on to more tech writing jobs with software companies and in medical fields. And yes, high tech figures in a lot of my novels.

I wrote my first novel in 2004 and sold my first 5 books in 2006. I love writing cozy mysteries (with just a bit of romance in them), with an occasional side-track into my first love, Sci-Fi/alternate America. I also have a long-running, never-ending saga about a post-apocalyptic America that I keep returning to, working on it when I get frustrated with our current society, laws, and politics. 

It's so much fun to create a world where I can kill off a large amount of the population and restructure the remaining society into what I think will work. It's very cathartic.

I'm retired and I'm spending time doing what I love.

Here's where you can find me:
I do a newsletter every other month and you find it on my News page. Do you need to contact me? Send email to jaye@jayellwilson.com