All Team

Val wishes she could claim she’s an international jewel thief with a fascinating adventurous life, but instead, she’s a nurse who is still recovering from the onslaught of the Covid pandemic. She was raised in a military family–one mom, one dad, one sister, one brother–and moved around a lot during her childhood. She had to make friends fast and learn to let go to move on every year or so. In the process, she became fascinated by people and what made them tick. This has been useful in her writing life where she has written a variety of characters in a collection of short stories, a romance, and three books with co-writer MJ Walker. Her first book with LPP will be a reissuance of her romance, In The Works. Meanwhile, she’s working on a brand-new romance she is scheduled to finish in 2023.

Judy is a lifelong Minnesotan who has always enjoyed reading and writing mysteries. She’s an editor, has published several short stories, and is a member of the infamous Minnesota Minions. She’s a member of Sisters in Crime National and is serving on the board of the Twin Cities Chapter of Sisters in Crime. After 38 years working for the US Postal Service, Judy wrote Black Friday, the first novel in her series about a postal service investigator. The second book, Silent Service, was published in March 2022. She is working on the third book in the series now and envisions many more tales about her flawed but fascinating sleuth, MC McCall. She’s become fascinated with a true crime case that occurred in Minnesota and is collaborating to write that book as well. Judy and her partner live in the Twin Cities and are avid bicyclists.

E.J. loves cats, reading, writing, and making quilts, not necessarily in that order. Her first novel is a mystery set in Oregon about an amateur sleuth and is called In Harm’s Way. In addition to sheltering and rescuing a half dozen cats or more at any given time, she’s completed the first draft of her second novel in the Annie Velasquez series called Family Secrets, which will be published in early 2023. E.J. grew up in the Pacific NW and now lives in the Portland Metro area with her cantankerous kitty clan.

Sandra was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest settlement of Lowell, Washington, up the hill from the lush green Snohomish River Valley and with an alluring view of the Cascade Mountains. At nine, she penned her first two Hitchcockian mystery stories while sitting in an abandoned shack next to the railroad tracks on the banks of a raging river. Her first novel, Thunder Edge, came out in May 2022 and is a character-driven story set in 1950s Port Townsend, which is nestled between the Cascade and Olympic mountains and notorious for its spectral figures darting about turn-of-the-century Victorian homes and buildings. When she’s not writing, Sandra enjoys painting watercolors and having fun with her friends.

Science is the focus of CA Farlow’s writing, and her ongoing research is in earthquake mechanics. The initial three books in her Nexus Series are available, and the fourth, Quantum Time, will be out in 2023. Her next publication is a thriller, The Paris Contagion, just released March 15, 2023. CA tries to balance the passion for long-distance cycling with her writing.

Jane, born a Texan and recently a Portland resident, has settled in at a new home on Whidbey Island in Washington state. She travels many roads and writes in many genres. She is an avid soccer fan, and her first novel, Game Changers, a romance set in the world of professional women’s soceer, was published in late 2019 and won Golden Crown Literary Society Awards in two categories: Debut Author and Contemporary Romance. She is working on her next novel.

Lori grew up in Oregon, spent 26 years in Minnesota, and has been back to Portland for over a decade now. She writes two crime fiction series, romances, literary fiction, historical fiction, short stories, articles about writing and creativity, and she loves to edit anthologies. Her next books are an adventure/romance novel, Adventures Unlimited, coming out in 2023, and a romance/drama, tentatively titled Strays, which she hopes to finish early in 2023 so she can get back to working on the Gun Series. Lori spends her free time reading, making art, jigsaw puzzling, writing to her friends and prison pen pal, and keeping up with her beloved nieces and nephews. She is a huge fan of music and movies. She’s also a founder of the Golden Crown Literary Society, leader of the Portland Lesbian Writers Group (the Polliwogs), and the administrator of the lesbian author recognition group, The Alice B Awards Appreciation Committee.

Sue Hardesty [1933 – 2022] lived for many years at the Oregon coast after a childhood and young adulthood in the heat of Buckeye, Arizona. She collaborated with her wife Nel Ward and Lee Lynch on The Butch Cook Book. She most enjoyed reading and writing mysteries, and LPP published a subsequent novel in the Loni Wagner Mystery Series and re-issued the first two, The Truck Comes on Thursday and Bus Stop at the Last Chance. Book 3 in the series, Taking the Long Way Home, came out in July 2019. Sue also wrote a colorful book of writing thoughts and advice entitled Nine Muses: Open the Door and Let Your Muses In. Her final writing project was a historical nonfiction book about her last city of residence, Newport, Oregon, called Through The Knothole, which she cowrote with Nel Ward, her spouse of 53 years. Sue didn’t live quite long enough to hold that final book in her hands, though she did see the digital proof. She lost her battle with cancer in December 2022 and is greatly missed.