Your Incredible Neighbors: Author writes ‘fiction beyond the ordinary’

Green Valley’s Janet Lorimer recently has had her first adult fiction novel published. It is a romantic fantasy, very much a fairy tale for adults.

Her publisher, Juno Publishing calls it “Fiction Beyond the Ordinary,” and Amazon.com has given her novel five-star reviews. Lorimer, always fascinated with werewolves and vampires, found the story “Beauty and the Beast” an inspiration and one of her favorite fairy tales, and so came the inspiration for “Master of Shadows.”

Lorimer has been a published author for 30 years, with her children’s stories appearing in several youth magazines including “Highlights for Children.”

“I decided I wanted to be a writer when I was about 5 and had just learned to read,” she said. “When I found out people actually wrote the stories I was reading, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.” Lorimer comes by her talent naturally as her mother was a published, award-winning poet.

“As I grew up, I always wrote for myself. After college, I did the traditional things, like marriage and children,” said Lorimer, who has two daughters with her husband, David. “So, I put off writing until one day, I decided to write seriously, and I started a novel!”

After her published children’s story in “Highlights,” she sold another short story. At this point Lorimer says, “I knew it wasn’t a fluke!” She began a monthly recipe column for a nutrition magazine which she did for six years, followed by writing books called HIGH/LOWS, which are books for adults with high interest/low reading levels, and published by Fearon Education, Lake Education and Saddleback Publishing. She authored more than 40 of these books.

This led to revising materials on various jobs in the hotel industry, golf maintenance, and a commercial driver’s license manual. Lorimer also began teaching writing classes at Leeward Community College in Hawaii, where she lived at the time. She also worked for two years as an associate editor and staff writer for Hawaii Parent Newsmagazine. Lorimer said, “Then, for a period of time, I burned out! Eventually, I went to work for a local railroad museum, and took over writing their newsletter, which I continue to do for them today.”

Lorimer is continuously writing and is now working on a new novel, entitled “Deadly Illusions”, a mystery with an element of the paranormal. She also has four children’s books coming out in 2008. Three of them are reprints being published by James A. Rock Publishers, and had originally been published by Scholastic Inc., and the fourth, a new juvenile novel entitled “The Ghost That Wasn’t Dead.”

This very prolific writer with the fantasy imagination will be attending the RTBR Convention in Pittsburgh this summer with her daughter, Marnie.

“Master of Shadows” can be purchased on line at Amazon.com or Juno.com, and can also be ordered at Border’s Book Store, Barnes and Noble, and Tortuga Books in Tubac.

Lois Weinert is a Green Valley freelance writer.