MARIANNA JAMESON

I have a propensity to get bored easily and, when bored, to ask a lot of questions. It's a combination that has enabled (or, arguably, forced) me to collect careers and experiences the way some people collect stamps. I blame this on two pivotal events that occurred on the same day in the fifth grade: My first attempt at writing comedy was met with tears of laughter from my creative writing teacher and classmates; later that afternoon, I was asked to leave the Girl Scouts because of a tendency to conduct analytical deconstructions of the leader's decisions. Later on, it got me kicked out of the convent before I really even had my foot in the door. These combined events became the foundation of a career path that has lurched rather than meandered through a series of jobs linked only by my often under-appreciated skill at finding the humor in any situation, and my audacity in writing about it.

So you might say I have a somewhat, ahem, diverse professional background, having had about three or four careers prior to writing fiction. The one trait that lends cohesion to them is that I have always been a writer and wrote a lot during my early careers. Then I became serious about it and went back to school. A few years later, armed with pair of degrees in journalism, I ventured into the lofty heights of academia with the intention of getting a Ph.D. in Journalism with an emphasis on communications law and regulation.

Alas, the techie side of me that I didn’t know existed burst onto the scene and about a year and a half into my doctoral program, I abandoned my doctoral dissertation, which focused on the privatization and globalization of international telecommunications systems and the commercialization of outer space. I segued pretty easily into the aerospace, defense, and software security industries, where I spent the next twenty years working as a senior technical writer and editor. Even now, I can’t completely abandon that world, so I keep my feet wet and my imagination churning by occasionally freelancing in the corporate security and intelligence worlds.

My first foray into publishing came when I was asked to ghost-write a business book for executives addressing corporate digital security. That project made me realize that, hey, writing books is fun! And having my name on the cover would be really cool!

A few years later, NAL, a division of Penguin Putnam, published two romances that I wrote, My Hero and Big Trouble. I thoroughly enjoyed writing those books and they provided a wonderful entrance into the world of being a "real" writer. It's a great buzz writing a happy ending in which two people fall in love and set their own world right.

When the opportunity to write high-tech eco-thrillers with a local celebrity serendipitously landed in my lap a few years ago, I took it. It's been great fun, especially when the paperback edition of our first book for Tor/Forge, Category 7, spent two weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list. Here’s hoping Dry Ice will do even better!

Writing action, destruction, murder, and general mayhem has taught me a lot about my own strengths as a writer. It was a big change to go from writing happy endings that ended with a kiss to writing happy endings in which the world is not quite damaged beyond repair. But despite the dark edges of my thrillers, I still manage to sneak some of my snarky dark humor and witty repartee into them.

I'll continue writing both thrillers and more romantic fiction until I get bored… and between the drama in each day's headlines and the laughlines of everyday life, I can't imagine that ever happening again.