About Jayne

     Jayne Ormerod writes what she knows--small towns (influenced by her childhood growing up in Chagrin Falls, Ohio) and beach settings (a result of 29 years as a navy spouse, always living within a flip-flop’s throw of the ocean.)  Thanks to a youth spent reading Nancy Drew and an adulthood devouring the words of Janet Evanovich, Mary Daheim, Lillian Jackson Braun and others, she can now write about amateur sleuths, exploding cars and dead bodies with a modicum of authority. 

    Raised in a 150-year old farmhouse, Jayne honed her story-telling skills at a tender age, convincing herself and others her home was haunted.  She wove epic sagas of buried treasure guarded by spirits of slain pirates and the soul of a crazed aunt locked in the attic pacing the floorboards for all eternity.  It wasn’t until Jayne grew up that she learned of the dwelling’s illustrious past as a house of ill repute. Oh, how much more, ah, colorful her ghost stories could have been.
     Many moves (19 and counting...) in conjunction with her husband’s service in the U.S. Navy did not accommodate Jayne’s blossoming career as a CIA (not the sexy “secret agent” kind, but a Certified Internal Auditor), so she needed something more transportable.  Thus, Jayne began her new writing career penning romance novels.  But she soon learned attempting to keep two desperately in love people at odds with each other for 300 pages was harder than it looked, and the experience caused her to overdose on chocolate.   But to her credit, three adverb-heavy romance novels lay tucked in a dark closet, hauled through all those moves in the anticipation of a blizzard-y day when she will need to build a fire to keep from freezing to death.

   Through the years, Jayne kept tapping away at the keyboard.  When her romantic heroine stumbled across a dead body, Jayne discovered the secret to creating instant conflict.  When her amateur sleuth skidded behind two large dogs in pursuit of a tabby, Jayne realized her portfolio of crazy life experiences could be drawn on to create characters with whom readers can relate.  When her merciless killer pulled a Glock, Jayne learned facing a fictional gun can be just as terrifying as staring up the nozzles of a real one. Armed with the building blocks of conflict, character and tension, Jayne developed the mismatched duo of Ellery Tindsdale (a not-so-gracefully-aging school teacher) and Samantha Greene (Ellery’s high-energy, haute-couture neighbor). Their first adventure is told in The Blond Leading the Blond, available in tradepaperback or ebook version from Amazon.  Jayne is hard at work editing the second book in the series, Blond Faith, and has hopes of continuing with an entire Blonds at the Beach series.
          Jayne loves to hear from readers and writers.  Email her at Jayne<dot>Ormerod<at>cox<dot>com