Real name: Jo Ann Vest Pseudonyms: Joanna Wayne. Joanna Wayne began her professional writing career with the release of her first novel, DEEP IN THE BAYOU, in 1994, but Joanna will be the first to tell you that the wheels were set in motion years before. She started reading at four years of age, the same age that she began making weekly trips to the library to check out as many books as they’d let her have, only to finish reading them all before bedtime. That love of books never waned. Joanna was born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana and was the middle child of a large family. She moved to New Orleans, Louisiana in 1984 when she married her current husband. New Orleans opened up a whole new realm of activities and she found the mix of cultures, music, history, food and sultry southern classics along with her love of reading a natural impetus for beginning her writing career. It was there that she attended her first writing class and joined her first professional writing organization. From that point on, there was no looking back. Now, forty published books later, Joanna has made a name for herself as being on the cutting edge of romantic suspense in both series and mainstream novels. She is known for the suspense and emotion she brings to the page, as she takes ordinary people and thrusts them into life-and-death situations. She has been on the Walden Bestselling List for romance and won many industry awards. She is a popular speaker at writing organizations and local community functions and has taught creative writing at the University of New Orleans Metropolitan College. She currently resides in a small community forty miles north of Houston, Texas with her husband. Though she still has many family and emotional ties to Louisiana, she loves living in the Lone Star state.