Go to Ebay to Bid!
Wednesday, October 11 at 8pm ET – Wednesday, October 18th at 8pm ET

Auction Items

• Thirty (30) Minute Zoom Chat with Darynda Jones
  • This is an opportunity to ask Darynda all of your burning questions about her books and writing process.
• Value: Priceless
• To be set up between Darynda, the library, and the winner at the end of the auction
  

  Shipping – NA

  $10 starting bid

Author’s Biography

For reasons known only to the Big Guy upstairs, NYTimes and USA Today Best Selling author Darynda Jones won both a Golden Heart and a RITA for her manuscript FIRST GRAVE ON THE RIGHT. But even before then, she couldn’t remember a time she wasn’t putting pen to paper. When she was five, she would pick up a pencil and notepad, scribble utter chaos onto the page and ask her mom to read her masterpiece aloud. Thankfully, her mother would play along. Later she wrote plays for the neighborhood kids, made up stories for her brother as he played cars, and fell in love with Captain Kirk. Those raging, seven-year-old hormones only fueled her imagination, prompting her to create fantastical stories for Barbie and Ken to enact. Ken was such a bad boy back then.

After years of being repeatedly sent to the principal’s office for daydreaming in class, she managed to make it to high school where she almost finished her first manuscript. Sitting with her BFF in a corner booth at the local Tastee-Freez for hours at a time, she wrote a post-apocalyptic story about a group of teens who bore a remarkable resemblance to the members of Van Halen and were trying to escape the tunnels of a huge government fallout facility decades after World War III had destroyed the surface of the earth. It was a science fiction version of The Warriors and destined to be a classic.

Life was good. Writing was good. Then she graduated and the real world came crashing through. She forced the dream aside in favor of sustenance and shelter, got married to a local rock star, and had at least two kids that she can think of, the oldest of whom was born Deaf, probably to spite her. When he was five, she packed up her boys and moved to Albuquerque to put him in a Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing program. The rock star stayed behind with the business, and they took turns going back and forth on the weekends to see each other for seven really long years.

While in Albuquerque, Darynda decided to see the cup half full and go back to college while she still had enough brain cells to make it worth her while. After graduating Summa cum Laude from the University of New Mexico with a degree in Sign Language Interpreting, she moved back to her hometown and got a real job. Several in fact, mostly teaching at a local college and interpreting pretty much everywhere. Based on personal experience, she does not recommend having more than three jobs at any given time.

But bit by bit, the desire to write needled its way back to the surface. Unable to squelch it any longer, she started writing seriously again in 2002 with one goal in mind: A publishing contract. Unfortunately, she sucked. Thank goodness practice makes almost-perfect and three complete manuscripts later, she won that Golden Heart, landed an amazing agent and sold to St. Martin’s Press in a three-book deal.

She has several series out, most notably the sultry Sunshine Vicram Mystery Series and the sexy Charley Davidson Paranormal Mystery Series, both with St. Martin’s Press. She hopes you enjoy reading them as much as she enjoys writing them.
Darynda lives in the Land of Enchantment, also known as New Mexico, with her gorgeous husband and two beautiful sons, the Mighty, Mighty Jones Boys.

Learn more about Darynda on her website.

Reminder:

The live auction will be from Wednesday October 11th at 8:00pm – Wednesday October 18th at 8:00pm ET on eBay. You can bid anytime during that week on eBay. 

You can find all of the details of the auction – bidding, shipping, etc – on our FAQ page.

Darynda Jones has generously donated her time to the Friends of the Ashland Public Library for our online Romance Swag Bag Auction 2023, helping raise funds to support our library programs for all ages. We are so grateful!