Bestselling, much beloved crime fiction author JA Jance has more than 60 books to her name, in three different series, and she’s still going strong. She’s made feisty independent female leads like Arizona County Sheriff Joanna Brady, and news anchor turned investigator Ali Reynolds, into international reader favorites.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and on the show today JA explains why she uses that penname, JA, rather than her given name Judith, and she talks about the day her first husband hitchhiked home with a serial killer, 20 minutes after he’d committed his last crime, and how, in a roundabout way, it helped to launch her writing career

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You'll hear JA - as well as many of our featured authors - answering Getting To Know You Five Quickfire Questions, giving candid snapshot of their likes and dislikes, as well as an exclusive monthly Behind the Scenes newsletter giving previews of upcoming books.

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Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

How JA's husband's encounter with a serial killer changed her lifeWhy women weren't taken seriously when she started outHow 1400 pages became her training for a new careerThe remarkable drive which keeps her goingHer process as a best selling mystery writerHow Covid might have changed things forever

Where to find J A Jance: 

Website: https://www.jajance.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JAJance

Twitter: @JAJance

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3453636.J_A_Jance

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZv3-uAGIRAPlbwr3IYwjyw

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

But now here's JA.

Introducing NY Times best selling author JA Jance

Jenny Wheeler: Hello there JA, and welcome to the show. It's good to have you with us.

NY Time best selling author JA Jance

JA Jance: I am really happy to be here. I am delighted to know that I have fans in your neck of the woods, and I would like to have more fans in your neck of the woods, so let’s hope this little chat helps that happen.

Jenny Wheeler: Surely. You have got an amazing back list. You have 60 books or more published in three series, all in crime fiction, two focused on officers of the law and one a news anchor turned mystery solver.

The officers of the law are Detective JP Beaumont, and there was a huge Beaumont series. Then we've got Arizona County Sheriff Joanna Brady and a big series involving her, and now Ali Reynolds, the news anchor.

Tell me what keeps your creative fires burning, because obviously this has been a life's work and you're still fully engaged in it.

JA Jance: What keeps me fresh is the fact that I don't just have one character. I wrote nine Beaumont books in a row, and I was tired of him and threatened to knock him off. My editor said, write something else, so I wrote the first Walker family book Hour of the Hunter. When I went back to Beaumont, it was fun again.

At that point, my editor said, come up with another series. The Beaumont books are written in the first person, through JP Beaumont’s point of view. I know this sounds like Agatha Christie, but I met him on a train. I had written a first novel that never sold to anybody primarily because it was 1400 pages long.

'Write something in Seattle,