Lorraine Heath | |
|---|---|
| Pen name | Lorraine Heath Rachel Hawthorne J.A. London Jade Parker |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Alma mater | BA University of Texas |
| Period | 1994 - present |
| Genre | contemporary romance, historical romance, paranormal romance, young adult |
| Notable works | Always to Remember |
| Notable awards | RITA award – Best Short Historical Romance 1997 Always to Remember |
| Website | |
| lorraineheath | |
Lorraine Heath is an American author of contemporary romance, historical romance, paranormal romance and young adult novels under multiple pen names, including Rachel Hawthorne, J.A. London, and Jade Parker. She is known for her "beautiful, deeply emotional romances" and in 1997, she received the Romance Writers of America RITA Award for Best Short Historical Romance for her novel Always to Remember.[1] As of June 2015, fifteen of her titles made the USA Today bestseller list.[2]
Heath was born in Watford, Hertfordshire, England from an American father and a British mother. Her parents met while her a father was stationed at Bovingdon while serving in the air force. Shortly after Heath's birth, her family moved to Texas where she was raised in Angleton, Texas.[3][4]
She earned a BA in psychology from the University of Texas and lived in Austin, Texas for sixteen years before moving to Plano, Texas in 1987. In 1998, Laura Bush, then First Lady of Texas, invited Heath to serve on a romance panel at the Texas Book Festival.[4][5]
She wrote training manuals and computer code for the IRS before she turned to fiction writing when she picked up LaVyrle Spencer’s Morning Glory which hooked her not only on Spencer's work, but convinced her that she wanted to write romance. She said up until then she "...had a preconception of what romance was." In 1993, she sold her first novel, Sweet Lullaby. Since then, she's authored over sixty novels, with historical and contemporary romance for adults and historical romance for teen readers. Under the names Rachel Hawthorne and Jade Parker, she writes popular contemporary, historical, and paranormal romance for teens readers. She also writes young adult with her son Alex under the name J. A. London.[3][4][6]
In an interview with USA Today, she revealed how she keeps her writing personas separate, "...it helps that I write my historicals in third person and my YA in first so it's a mental shift when I'm writing a particular genre. Writing with my son is a bit more challenging because we wanted J.A. to have a unique voice that was edgier to go with our dystopian world and he's often marking words or phrases that he thinks sounds too Rachel-ish. It's rather like going on a mini-vacation when I slip between the genres. I think it helps to keep my writing fresh because I'm able to go in diverse directions and explore various worlds."[7]
She named the following authors as influential in her young adult writing: Richelle Mead, Sophie Jordan, Marissa Meyer, but mostly Catherine Clark. "When I first became interested in writing Young Adult, I read her books to get a flavoring for the YA genre. Then I was reading her simply because I enjoyed her stories so much."[8]
She's known for her "deeply emotional romances" and "deft characterizations, attention to historical detail and mastery of small moments."[1][9]
Her writing habits include writing late at night and listening to a CD of a thunderstorm. "It narrows my focus so it's just me, the story, and the thunder." When her novel A Matter of Temptation reached the New York Times bestseller list, she recalls "I had been out walking the dog and I came in and there was a message on the machine. It said, 'My dear, you've hit the New York Times.' Actually, my husband thought somebody had died because I was screaming and crying... It's something that all authors aspire to do so it's ... it's nice when it happens."[4]
She relates the inspiration for her RITA-winning novel Always to Remember in an interview. "While watching a PBS special on the Civil War, a comment was made that often men from the same town served in the same unit so if a unit was wiped out, the town had no men to return to it. It mentioned how hard this was on the townspeople... I began to wonder, what if only one man returned and everyone thought he was a coward since he survived, but he really wasn't? And what if the town wanted a memorial, and he was the only one with the skills to make it? And the story began to develop from there."[10]
In 2015, publisher Avon Books and independent bookstore Powell's Books started a new romance-author curated list of four books called "Mutual Attractions". The third collaboration was released on June 1, 2015 by Heath, and her short list consisted of Jennifer Bernard's All of Me, Kathleen Baldwin's A School for Unusual Girls, Kristen Callihan's Evernight, and Sarah MacLean's No Good Duke Goes Unpunished.[11]
Heath currently resides in Plano with her husband and two sons.[4]
