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. So far, I have published 17 books.
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. Bloodhound Books has published the first three: Chasing the Case; Redneck’s Revenge, and Checking the Traps. The others are: Killing the Story, Working the Beat, Following the Lead, Missing the Deadline, and Finding the Source. I have also published my Hilltown Books: The Sweet Spot, The Sacred Dog and Northern Comfort. In addition, I published The Swanson Shuffle, inspired by my experience living and working in a psychiatric halfway house. For young readers, there is the Twin Jinn series featuring a family of magical beings living among us humans.
Here’s the link to find my books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Joan-Livingston/e/B01E1HKIDG