At each Bouchercon, several authors are picked to be the guests of honor. During Bouchercon 2014, which begins November 13, the American Guest of Honor is J.A. Jance, who has written more than 50 novels during the past 30 years.

I’ll be conducting the interview with J.A. beginning at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 13.

J.A. has been a real force in the mystery genre since 1985, when her first J.P. Beaumont novel, Until Proven Guilty, was published.
 
One reason that her novels are so accessible is that she writes about real people—men and women whom each of us can relate to. There are other female sheriffs in the mystery genre, but J.A. was the first to give her Joanna Brady a full and complicated live. In that, J.A. recognized that none of us are just one thing. Our careers, families, hopes, dramas, and joys all serve to make us who we are.

J.A. also knows that using one’s life experiences can make for richer novels. So her first husband’s alcoholism helped shaped J. P. Beaumont. Her experiences as a single parent have gone into the background for Joanna Brady.

The years that she taught on the Tohono O’Odham reservation west of Tucson, Arizona, are reflected in Hour of the Hunter and Kiss of the Bees.

In Second Watch, she paid tribute to a former classmate who was killed in Vietnam.

We’ll be talking about her characters and her life as a writer during our interview at Bouchercon. And if  you can’t make it to Long Beach, bring J.A. Jance to you by reading her novels.