It’s the birthday of Jayne Ann (Castle) Krentz (b. 1948), who has written so many books (more than 150) and so many New York Times best sellers (50 consecutive best sellers) that they’ve spawned a bunch of pseudonyms, though she has gotten it down to three names: Jayne Ann Krentz (her married name) for contemporary romantic-suspense; Amanda Quick for historical romantic-suspense; and Jayne Castle (maiden name) for futuristic/paranormal romantic suspense.

So: always romance. Sometimes with ghosts, sometimes not.

Krentz was born in Cobb, California, and raised in Borrego Springs, California. She got a B.A. in history at UC Santa Cruz and then a master’s in library science at San Jose State, a decision she says was made “out of absolute desperation” because, you know: history and jobs. She learned to do research, which was terrific for her ultimate career as a writer, but first tried being an elementary school librarian in the Virgin Islands, which was “an unmitigated career disaster” because she was no good at the teaching part.

Krentz then worked in the library at Duke University, where she also began writing novels. After six years of rejection, she finally got one published. Evidently someone at Simon & Schuster quarreled with someone at Harlequin in Canada, and S&S finally decided they needed to develop their own stable of romance authors, and the timing was right, and Krentz—having honed her craft for six years—was on her way.

Krentz has described her writing process as “juggling with chainsaws”—so that’s fun. (Fun, completely irrelevant fact: there is a guy with a chainsaw trimming branches outside my window even now, and no sign of any juggling whatsoever.) Krentz and her engineer husband, Frank, sometimes go on a cruise for a month, where Krentz gets up every day at 5 a.m. and gets a ton of work done, which explains those two books a year. The rest of the time they live in Seattle, Washington, in an apartment with splendid views of both Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains.

Krentz’s female leads are generally strong and brainy with good careers. Her latest novels include The Other Lady Vanishes (2019, by Amanda Quick) and Untouchable (2019, by Jayne Ann Krentz), although she’s probably published a couple more novels in the time it’s taken me to write this post.

Have a splendid day with any feverish but perky children home from school for the second day and stay scrupulously honest to the data.