Joanna Novins

Author Joanna Novins spent over a decade working for the Central Intelligence Agency. She credits the Agency with honing her writing skills, teaching her to recognize the compelling elements of a story, and sending her overseas where she met her husband while standing on a customs line. For her work at the agency, Joanna received seven performance awards, all of which are neatly stacked in a closet because she can't tell anyone how she earned them. After the birth of her second child, she retired from the agency, under the false impression that small children are easier to deal with than policymakers, military officers, and State Department officials. Realizing her mistake, she took refuge in stacks of romance novels and finally turned to writing them in 2001.

The Souvenir Countess, a romantic adventure set against the excitement of the French Revolution and the swirl of English high-society is Joanna's debut novel. Its release in January 2004 will be closely followed by the release of a sequel, Souvenir of Love, in February 2004. Drawing on her experiences living and working in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, Joanna creates a world in her books that has been described as "lush and intriguing." As for the colorful characters who inhabit her novels, she admits to being inspired by several decades of eccentric Southern relatives. She points out that she's not the first writer to exploit her family in this way; her great uncle inspired one of the characters in Robert Penn Warren's famous novel, All the King's Men.

Joanna holds a Masters Degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and was awarded a Bachelors degree with honors in history from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She currently lives in Connecticut with her husband, her sons, and enough animals to stock a small zoo.