Lorena McCourtney

Lorena McCourtney started writing in the fifth grade, all her stories about horses. This love of horses carried her through a degree in agriculture from Washington State University, with plans for a career in agricultural writing. Her first job out of college with a big meat-packing company in the Midwest followed this plan, but she quickly discovered that writing about hogs and sausage making was not how she wanted to spend her life. Marriage, motherhood, and raising horses and cattle intervened for several years, and by the time she got back to writing, she realized fiction was what she wanted to write. She first published numerous children's stories, then short stories for women. Romance novels followed, then a switch to Christian romances, and now she feels she's found her real home in Christian romantic suspense and cozy mysteries. "Go, Ivy, Go!", the latest in her Ivy Malone Mysteries, is her 46th published book. She says Ivy's "invisibility" in these books came from her own occasional feelings of aging into invisibility. (And both she and Ivy say it can come in quite handy at times!) Lorena and her husband live in southern Oregon, where their only livestock now is one eccentric cat. Beachcombing on the Oregon coast is one of her favorite activities, and she’s used the Oregon coast as a setting in several mysteries. She also enjoys reading and hiking, and she collects antique spurs and pocket knives. She says her mission statement for her writing is that she wants to whatever talent the Lord has given her to serve Him.