Meet Janice Macdonald

Hi, I'm glad you dropped by my web site. Since you did, I'll reward you by yammering on about my life and probably telling you far more than you ever really wanted to know. The great thing about this form of communication, versus face to face introductions, is I won't know if your eyes glaze over! Anyway, I've been writing forever. I still have the diaries I kept when I was a child. "Had egg sandwiches for tea. Took a bath. Mummy cut my toenails." Obviously my childhood wasn't wildly exciting. I grew up in Kent , on the southeast coast of England , by the way, and came to the United States when I was seventeen. I still have family in England , but my mother and sister both live in this country.

I majored in journalism at California State University , Long Beach and worked as a reporter on a number of small weekly papers. I have a portfolio filled with yellowing pages of news stories I wrote. I cringe when I read them today. One publisher insisted only that reporters turned in ten pages of copy every day. It didn't matter what you wrote about, you just had to churn out the pages. I wrote lengthy pieces about whatever came into my head. Processing olives, hanging wallpaper, the secret life of mosquitos.

Surprise, surprise, none of the papers lasted long and, after the last one folded, I decided there had to be more reliable and lucrative ways to make a living. I switched to public relations in the early 1980's and eventually became director of media relations for a large west coast HMO. It was there that I had the memorable experience of saying no to Mike Wallace when the 60 Minutes news crew showed up one day.

I left the corporate world in 1990 and free-lanced for a number of publications including the Los Angeles Times. I also ghostwrote medical articles for various professional journals.

Today, fiction keeps me quite busy. I work from my home in Vista , California , where I live with my husband, Joe, on three acres with an ever changing cast of animals--currently, three pygmy goats, a Shetland pony and, McKenna, a black lab. Last year, I discovered the joys of living on the water. When I'm on deadline, I stay on a Columbia 26 sailboat in Long Beach . Very peaceful and conducive to concentration. I have two grown children, Christopher who lives in Washington and Carolyn who lives in Arizona with her husband but is considering a move to the northwest. I also have a granddaughter, Emily, who is nearly nine.

Okay, if you've stuck with me this far, why not go ahead and put your name on my mailing list. I'll send you news of new releases, contest information and coupons for free European cruises. Not really, I wanted to see if you were paying attention. But leave your name anyway.

All the best,

Janice