Official Bio:

A native of Southern California, J.T. Geissinger is an author, entrepreneur and avid wine collector. She writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance and is currently at work on the third book of the Night Prowler series. Her debut novel, Shadows’ Edge, will be released by Montlake Romance in June, 2012. She currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband and one too many cats.

Unofficial Bio:

Because my life philosophy runs something along the lines of, “I’ll get to it later, right now I’m too busy (choose one: napping/reading/surfing the net/playing with the cat)”, it wasn’t until I passed 40 that it occurred to me I might want to try and DO something. You know, with my life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d been doing things for years. Lots of things, actually, some of them more interesting (and questionable) than others. I started my first business at 24 and have worked for myself ever since, I’ve travelled all over the world, I’ve amassed a collection of wine that is large enough to be embarrassing (I’m blaming that one on my husband), I learned how to ride a motorcycle and play the piano and shoot a gun. (Don’t ask.) But one day on the dark side of 40 I woke up and said, “Holy shit! I’m over 40! How the hell did that happen?! I was 17 like, ten minutes ago! I need to produce something! I need to FOCUS! Wait—here’s an idea! I’m going to write a book!”

Your classic mid-life crisis rears its ugly head. The only problem was I had no idea what kind of book I wanted to write.

(Side note: when I told my father I was being published, he looked at me and said, “What made you think you could do something like that?” to which I truthfully responded, “It never occurred to me that I couldn’t.” Ignorance truly is bliss. I highly recommend it.)

I’m a passionate, dedicated reader. I can go through three books a week, easy, with no discernible common thread between them. Case in point: last week I finished Cloud Atlas, Breaking the Vicious Cycle (contrary to what springs to mind from the rather ominous title, it’s a book about digestive health), The Taker and Fifty Shades of Grey. My literary tastes are all over the place, which made the decision of which genre I’d write in confusing, to say the least. I didn’t have a story idea in mind, nor did I have a writing background. All I had was a totally unsubstantiated belief that I could write a book.

Then fate, as it will, intervened.

There were two specific occurrences that propelled me into writing what eventually became Shadows’ Edge, my debut novel. The first was reading Twilight. I am only slightly ashamed to admit that I, like bazillions of other women, fell in love with Edward Cullen. OK, my reasoning went, paranormal romance. Why not? Boom, there’s your genre.

The second thing involved an incredibly beautiful black stray cat who arrived at my office one day and promptly made it clear that we should all worship her. This cat (I named her Angelina, in honor of Ms. Jolie) has the most bizarre ability to appear and disappear as if vanishing into smoke. One minute she’s sitting there right beside you, the next minute poof! Nothing. Total Cheshire Cat material. And when she’s around she looks at you with this very canny, intense stare as if she is just about to say something. Honestly, it’s unnerving. But it got me to thinking…what if?

And that’s all imagination needs. A good “what if”.

So I began writing a story about an ancient race of shape-shifters who live hidden from the everyday world. I did a bunch of research on ancient Egypt and their cat worship culture and wove that in, and of course I needed a love story and a handsome, brooding hero and a powerful enemy to round it all out. I finished it in a few months and sent it out to agents.

I was going on nothing but pure hubris and the conviction that if Stephenie Meyer could do it, so could I.

Long story short, I found a wonderful agent and a wonderful publisher and am a very happy, grateful camper. What I’m hoping you, dear Reader, will take away from all of this is the conviction that if I can do it, so can you, regardless of whether it’s writing a book or starting a business or finally finishing college. Believe me: You can do it.

And when you accomplish your goal and someone asks you what made you think you could do it, tell them it never occurred to you that you couldn’t.