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Last edited by jgalron
November 12, 2022 | History

Iris Johansen

Iris Johansen was born on April 7, 1938. She worked for a major airline for many years and traveled extensively. After her two children, Tamara and Roy, left home for High School, she decided to devote her newfound free time to writing. Since she loved reading romance novels, she penned a love story, and found to her surprise that "I was just as voracious a writer as I was a reader." During the 1980's, her name was emblazoned on dozens of slender volumes featuring spirited adventuresses, passionate mystery men and smoldering love scenes. These days, Iris is one of a posse of former romance writers dominating the New York Times bestseller lists: Jayne Ann Krentz, Nora Roberts, Linda Howard, Tami Hoag, Sandra Brown and Tess Gerritsen all came up through the category-romance ranks.

Iris Johansen's writing hobby became a career after she sent her first romance novel in to Bantam Love swept. Early on in her career, she developed the habit of following characters from book to book, sometimes introducing minor characters in one novel who then become major figures in another. She developed families, relationships and even fictional countries in her romance novels, which "stretched the boundaries of the standard formulas, "according to Barbara E. Kemp in Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers. In 1991, she broke out of category romance (a term for short books written to conform to the length, style and subject matter guidelines for a publisher's series) with The Wind Dancer, a romantic-suspense novel set in16th-century Italy. She followed it with two sequels, Storm Winds and Reap the Wind, to form a trilogy, then wrote several more stand-alone romance novels before The Ugly Duckling was published in 1996. The Ugly Ducklingwas her first book to be released in hardcover, and the first to significantly broaden her readership beyond her romance fan base. Since then, her plots have gotten tighter and more suspense-driven; critics have praised her "flesh-and-blood characters, crackling dialogue and lean, suspenseful plotting" (Publishers Weekly). Some of her most popular books feature forensic sculptor Eve Duncan, who first appeared in The Face of Deception in 1998. But she seems equally comfortable with male protagonists, and her books have crossed the gender division that often characterizes popular fiction. Indeed, Publishers Weekly called The Search "that rarity: a woman's novel for men."

Now, Iris Johansen is a bestselling writer, who has more than twenty million copies of her books in print and has won many awards for her achievements inwriting. "My writing schedule is very disciplined. I try to be up in my office by nine every morning and I work until I've completed at least ten pages. Sometimes that takes four or five hours, sometimes ten or twelve. It depends on the flow, the research, and the pace at which the characters are moving the story. There are times when the story is streaking like a bullet. Then I just hang on and stay with it. I do have a research assistant, my daughter, Tamara. I wouldn't know what to do without her. She's invaluable in finding out both the small details and the big picture, though I do make her want to pull her hair out in frustration sometimes when I ask her if there isn't a way we can make a certain plot point happen. But then she starts to dig and quite often comes up with a way that can be truthful and factual and still keep my story humming."

Iris lives near Atlanta, Georgia, where she is currently at work on a new novel, while her daughter, Tamara Brooking, serves as her research assistant. Her son, Roy Johansen, is an Edgar Award-winning screenwriter and novelist, and they have collaborated in some projects.

Born 7 April 1938

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  • Cover of: Killer dreams
    Cover of edition killerdreams0000joha_h2k9 Cover of edition killerdreamsjoh00joha Cover of edition killerdreamsjoha00joha First published in 2006 14 editions

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  • Cover of: Quicksand
    Cover of edition quicksand00joha_0 Cover of edition quicksand00joha First published in 2008 13 editions

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  • Cover of: Silent Thunder: A Novel
    First published in 2008 12 editions

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  • Cover of: Pandora's daughter
    Cover of edition pandorasdaughterjoha Cover of edition pandorasdaughter00iris Cover of edition pandorasdaughter00joha Cover of edition pandorasdaughter00joha_0 First published in 2007 11 editions

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  • Cover of: Reap the wind
    Cover of edition reapwind00joha Cover of edition reapwind00joha_0 First published in 1997 11 editions

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  • Cover of: The Search
    Cover of edition search00joha Cover of edition searchjo00joha Cover of edition search0000joha_t8o1 Cover of edition search00iris Cover of edition search00joha First published in 2000 10 editions

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  • Cover of: Blink of an Eye
    First published in 2021 9 editions

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  • Cover of: Long after midnight
    Cover of edition longaftermidnigh0000joha Cover of edition longaftermidnigh00joha_1 Cover of edition longaftermidnigh00joha First published in 1997 9 editions

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  • Cover of: Shadow Zone: A Novel
    First published in 2010 8 editions

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  • Cover of: The killing game
    Cover of edition killinggame0000joha Cover of edition killinggame00joha First published in 1999 8 editions

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  • Cover of: Fatal tide
    Cover of edition fataltide0000joha_i4y3 Cover of edition fataltide0000joha_g5d1 Cover of edition fataltide00joha First published in 2003 8 editions

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  • Cover of: The Ugly Duckling
    Cover of edition uglyduckling00joha Cover of edition uglyduckling00joharich First published in 1996 7 editions

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  • Cover of: Body of lies
    Cover of edition bodyoflies00joharich Cover of edition bodyoflies000joha Cover of edition bodyoflies00joharich First published in 2002 7 editions

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  • Cover of: On the run
    Cover of edition onrunjoharich Cover of edition onrunjoh00joha Cover of edition onrun00iris Cover of edition onrunjoha00joha First published in 2005 7 editions

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  • Cover of: Stalemate
    Cover of edition stalemate0000joha_y0q1 Cover of edition stalemate00joha First published in 2006 7 editions

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  • Cover of: Close Your Eyes: A Novel
    First published in 2012 7 editions

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  • Cover of: Dead aim
    Cover of edition deadaimjoha00joha Cover of edition deadaimjoha00joha Cover of edition deadaim00joha Cover of edition deadaim0000joha Cover of edition deadaim00joha_0 First published in 2003 7 editions

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  • Cover of: Firestorm
    Cover of edition firestorm00joha_0 Cover of edition firestorm00joha_1 Cover of edition firestorm00iris Cover of edition firestorm00joha First published in 2004 7 editions

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  • Cover of: The perfect witness
    First published in 2014 6 editions

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  • Cover of: Hindsight
    First published in 2020 6 editions

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Born 7 April 1938

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November 12, 2022 Edited by jgalron Edited without comment.
November 8, 2022 Edited by bitnapper Edited without comment.
November 8, 2022 Edited by bitnapper merge authors
September 4, 2013 Edited by CGN Edited without comment.
April 1, 2008 Created by an anonymous user initial import