The Best Reviews: Mary Jo Putney

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Mary Jo Putney

Pseudonym: M. J. Putney.

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http://www.maryjoputney.com/

Mary Jo Putney was born in Upstate New York with a reading addiction, a condition for which there is no known cure. After earning degrees in English Literature and Industrial Design at Syracuse University, she did various forms of design work in California and England before inertia took over in Baltimore, Maryland, where she has lived very comfortably ever since.

While becoming a novelist was her ultimate fantasy, it never occurred to her that writing was an achievable goal until she acquired a computer for other purposes. When the realization hit that a computer was the ultimate writing tool, she charged merrily into her first book with an ignorance that illustrates the adage that fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Since fortune sometimes favors the foolish, her first book sold quickly, thereby changing her life forever, in most ways for the better. ("But why didn't anyone tell me that writing would change the way one reads?") Like a lemming over a cliff, she gave up her freelance graphic design business to become a full-time writer as soon as possible.

Since 1987, Ms. Putney has published twenty-six books and counting. Her stories are noted for psychological depth and unusual subject matter such as alcoholism, death and dying, and domestic abuse. She has made all of the national bestseller lists including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USAToday, and Publishers Weekly. Four of her books have been named among the year's top five romances by The Library Journal, and The Spiral Path has just been named one of 2002's top ten romances by Booklist, the review site of the American Library Association.

She has also won numerous awards, including Ritas for Dancing on the Wind and The Rake and the Reformer, two Romantic Times Career Achievement Awards, and four NJRW Golden Leaf awards, plus the NJRW career achievement award for historical romance. Her second contemporary romance, The Spiral Path, was released in January 2002, The Bartered Bride, last in her historical Bride trilogy, was published in hardcover in May 2002, and November will see the release of her holiday collection, Christmas Revels. Her next contemporary romance, Twist of Fate, is scheduled for August 2003.

Ms. Putney says that not least among the blessings of a full-time writing career is that one almost never has to wear pantyhose.