I grew up near the ocean in Massachusetts, where my grandparents arrived from the Azores and Madeira islands. My childhood was steeped in all things Portuguese — from saintly aspirations to festas down the street.

My mother taught me to love reading with twice-weekly trips to the public library. My teachers inspired me to write. I longed for straight hair and popularity but settled for being smart instead.

I was the first of my family to graduate from college.

For a very long time, I was too busy raising six kids to write much. I started with poetry but found my way to prose when I began reporting on the hill towns of Western Massachusetts for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. I covered meetings, disasters, and small town scandals. I profiled such people as the woman who kept a pet porcupine and the farmer who became Clinton’s national security advisor.

I worked as a journalist for over 30 years. My most recent gig was managing editor of an award-winning newspaper, The Taos News, for eight years. My editorials won state and national awards, and I’d like to think, brought positive change. More recently, I was named top editor of The Greenfield Recorder, Daily Hampshire Gazette and Athol Daily News, community newspapers in Western Massachusetts. But I have left journalism to concentrate on my own writing.

As a journalist I listened to the way people talked and observed how they behaved. It’s an experience I believe has paid off with realistic dialogue and true-to-life characters in my novels.

I placed short stories and non-fiction pieces in numerous publications but my true calling is writing novels — realism for adults and magical realism for middle-grade kids. I published Peace, Love, and You Know What, an adult novel inspired by my own college experience, and The Sweet Spot, set in the hill towns of Western Massachusetts, where Hank and I returned after over a decade in Taos, New Mexico.

Currently, I am immersed in writing the Isabel Long Mystery Series, featuring a longtime journalist turned amateur P.I. who solves cold cases in the hill towns of Western Massachusetts. Darkstroke Books has published the first six: Chasing the Case; Redneck’s Revenge, Checking the Traps, Killing the Story, and Working the Beat. The seventh, Missing the Deadline, is next. Darkstroke has also published these two Hilltown Books: The Sacred Dog and Northern Comfort.

Here’s the link to find my books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Joan-Livingston/e/B01E1HKIDG