Lori Handeland is a five-time nominee and two-time winner of the RITA Award from Romance Writers of America, as well as the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over sixty novels spanning the genres of paranormal romance, urban fantasy, contemporary romance, historical romance and historical fantasy.  

 

     After a quarter-century of success and accolades, she began a new chapter in her career with her women’s fiction debut, Just Once (Severn House, January 2019), which received a coveted, starred review from Library Journal and was optioned as a feature film by Catalyst Global Media.

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     Lori set her sight on being an author at the age of ten. She remembers sitting at a typewriter before she knew how to type, pecking out a story about a family who went into space. An only child, her summers were spent with that typewriter, television, and, above all, books. She recalls thinking that if she could write books of her own, she would never run out of books to read. As a young adult, she got sidetracked by the need to make a living. She worked as a waitress and later enrolled in college to become a teacher. 

 

     While student teaching, Lori started reading a life-changing book, How to Write a Romance and Get It Published. Within its pages the author, Kathryn Falk, mentioned Romance Writers of America. There was a local chapter; Lori joined it, dived into learning all about the craft and business, and got busy writing a romance novel. With only five pages completed, she entered a contest where the prize was having an editor at Harlequin read her first chapter. She won.

 

     Lori sold her first novel, a western historical romance, in 1993. In the years since then, she has written eleven novels and numerous shorts in the popular Nightcreature Novels, five installments in the Phoenix Chronicles, six works of contemporary romance about the Luchettis, a duet of Shakespeare Undead novels, the Sisters of the Craft trilogy, where she created time traveling witches, as well as the sexy, gritty wild west trilogy Once Upon a Time in the West and the fan favorite Rock Creek Six, co-written with New York Times Bestselling author Linda Winstead Jones, along with many more standalone books. 

 

     Her fiction has won both acclaim and coveted awards, including two RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America for Best Paranormal Romance (Blue Moon) and Best Long Contemporary Category Romance (The Mommy Quest), a Romantic Times Award for Best Harlequin Superromance (A Soldier’s Quest) and a National Reader’s Choice Award for Best Paranormal (Hunter’s Moon).

 

     Lori lives in Southern Wisconsin with her husband of over thirty-five years. In between writing and reading, she enjoys long walks with their rescue mutt, Arnold, and visits from her two grown sons, awesome daughter-in-law and perfectly adorable grandchildren.

 

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