Bio

Lesann wrote some books and that makes curious people ask questions. Usually, they want to know how a writer gets started down the wordy path. So here you go, the nitty gritty on her being a word nerd.

Here’s the short version:  

Writer. Anthropologist. Inspired by rocks, empty landscapes, ancient art & prehistory. Pens historical & contemporary mystery, suspense, and horror – with romance, of course.

Here’s the long version – don’t say you weren’t warned:

Lesann wrote her first book at the tender age of eleven. She still has it somewhere although the pages long ago yellowed. It was typed on her mother’s vintage portable electric typewriter, the kind with a fabric ribbon that had dried out and so the type was faded. The “e” key kept snapping off and had to be glued back on until it would no longer hold. That manuscript has every letter “e” carefully penciled in. She should excavate it from the stacks of teen-angst poetry and see what her adolescent self thought was worth writing about.

Over the years she got distracted with life and college and a few romances of her own. Eventually generating an income subsumed the writing urge. Until a couple years ago when it swam to the surface and kicked every thing else to the curb. Hard. The great thing about all that living in between is getting to use all the success and misery, travel and discovery, to inform her work. Lesann’s got stacks of stuff to sort through, journals and research, papers and articles, more research, reams of fieldwork notes, etc. Lots of raw material to draw upon. If she had to categorize her writing then it most closely aligns to a jumble of these genres: mystery, suspense, paranormal, and romance.

Many opportunities to meet and listen to other writers have come her way. Most of those experiences occurred in conferences and workshops but a few personal interactions she credits to living a wicked and self-gratifying life. Anne Rice once bade her good morning in front of St. Louis #2 in New Orleans. That was a good day. Another time she bumped into Jeffrey Deaver in a restaurant in Pacific Grove. Delicious. In the midst of admiring an outdoor sculpture in Seattle she realized the man sitting next to her was Sherman Alexie. Awesome.

It’s the simple things that make her happy. She adores skulking around conferences and sitting through workshops. As a child she quickly learned that eavesdropping was both rewarding and useful. Which is why she knows ALL the dirty secrets in her family (such as they are).

On the professional side Lesann has earned degrees in anthropology and education, teaching credentials, technology certifications, and bunches of professional affiliations. She’s conducted extensive anthropological fieldwork in the United States and Canada; traveled many places but not everywhere yet; interviewed a great many people; picked up more roadkill and processed more animal remains than the general public would believe; evaluated and graded thousands (count’em) of research papers, and has former students all over the world. That’s pretty cool. She’s proud of all that stuff and all of them.

…but this is for her.