The Story Behind the Stories

Joanne Pence is a USA Today bestselling author whose novels span mysteries, romantic suspense, contemporary romance, historical fiction, women’s fiction, fantasy, and thrillers. Her stories have taken readers from modern-day San Francisco and small Idaho mountain towns to places and times centuries past.

But writing fiction wasn't always the plan.

The Beginning

After earning a Master’s degree in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, Joanne headed to Japan, where she lived for a year with dreams of becoming a foreign correspondent. She had imagined a career chasing news stories around the world, reporting on crime, politics, and the people caught in the middle of them.

Then life intervened.

Marriage and children changed her plans, and Joanne discovered that there was another way to tell the stories that had always fascinated her. Writing fiction turned out to be a lot more fun than chasing the news—and she could create the crimes, characters, twists, and worlds herself.

A Writing Life

That discovery launched a writing career that has crossed genres and decades. Joanne's books have earned USA Today bestseller recognition and have been honored with or nominated for numerous major writing and publishing awards, including the Willa Cather Literary Award for Historical Fiction, North American Book Award for Mystery, Idaho Top Fiction Award, Golden Quill, RWA’s Rita and Golden Heart Awards, Daphne du Maurier Award, Independent Bookseller’s Golden Scroll, and Romantic Times Career Achievement and Best Amateur Sleuth Awards.

Along the way, she has been deeply involved in the writing community. She served as president of the Boise chapter of Sisters in Crime, was a board member of the Popular Fiction Association of Idaho, and was a founding member of the Idaho Writers Guild. She has also held several offices in the California Writers Club

Beyond the Books

Writing, however, wasn't Joanne's only career before she became a full-time novelist. She has written for magazines, worked for the federal government, and taught school in Japan—experiences that have given her a lifelong curiosity about people, places, history, and the sometimes unexpected paths our lives take.

A huge change in life came when this San Francisco native left northern California to move to the Idaho mountains more than twenty-five years ago - and found it to be a place she truly loves.

Today

Joanne now enjoys writing from the mountains north of Boise, where the landscape, history, and characters around her continue to find their way into her imagination.

Her novels may be very different from one another—a twisty mystery, a suspenseful crime story, a romance, a tale of family and friendship, or an adventure reaching back through history—but the goal remains the same: to create characters readers care about, take them somewhere they haven't been before, and tell a story they won't soon forget.