The Leader

Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: A&E

In an effort to create another facet for my column, I decided that I would shine a spotlight on one author from time to time. For my first spotlight, I chose Lori Handeland because not only is she from Wisconsin, she is a UWM alum to boot!

Lori grew up in Brown Deer, WI and got bit by the writing bug at a young age. She may not have been the pompom captain or dated the football quarterback, but her love of writing had her putting pen to paper for the school newspaper and magazine when she wasn't competing on the forensic team. She continued to hone her craft with an English degree at UWM. She got as far as entering the classroom to teach, but soon realized that path wasn't for her.

After starting a family, Lori became an author, entered a contest and received a request for a full manuscript. Unfortunately, it had been rejected and asked to be revised for resubmission. By the time she found an agent and received another rejection, she had written two books. She knew this is what she wanted to do. Eventually, that first book was sold to Dorchester Publishing and about the time the first copy was being sold, she became a Golden Heart-a national contest for unpublished authors sponsored by the Romance Writers of America, or RWA-finalist.

Lori went on to win PRISM and Write Touch Readers awards, as well as the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence before finally snagging RWA's highly sought after RITA Award for Best Paranormal Romance in 2004 for Blue Moon, which would become the first of the Nightcreature Series. The RITA is the writer's equivalent to an actor's Oscar, a mark of prestige, honor and overall talent recognition.

Blue Moon built the foundation for her cult following and cemented her place in the paranormal genre. Hunter's Moon, the second in the series, came out a year later winning a National Readers' Choice Award and her Harlequin Superromance, A Soldier's Quest, won a Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award that same year. She won the RITA again in 2006 with her The Mommy Quest, and the anthology containing her short story, "Charmed by the Moon," winning a Pearl Award for best anthology. Thunder Moon received a RITA nomination in 2008 for Best Paranormal Romance and marks the Nightcreature series' hiatus, though Lori plans to write more of them in the future.

Why is such a long running series going on hiatus? To let The Phoenix Chronicles Series, Lori's urban fantasy tales, take center stage. Lori was doing a blog tour promoting her newest book, Doomsday Can Wait, the second book in the series, when I found her. I checked out her website and found, "In the Beginning," a free eBook prequel to Any Given Doomsday, and downloaded it. I only read one-and-a-half pages of it so far, but if it's any indication of her talent and voice, the series will be an interesting and wild ride.

Continued...

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