Susan James was born in Sacramento, California where she grew up with lots of sunshine and the warm summer nights that flock whole families to the drive-in movies. She grew up in a family of readers. While her sister would read the Encyclopedia for fun, Susan’s tastes ran more toward Nancy Drew, The Hundred Dresses, and Clan of the Cave Bear. Dad’s favorites were Joseph Wambaugh types and Mom read Asimov like a speed reader.

Susan colleged all over the country. She started as a business major at Cal State, Sacramento, and after running headlong into accounting (three times) without any success, she switched to English as a major. In her junior year, she transferred to San Diego State University where there was more sunshine and the call of the ocean. She earned a B.A. in English from SDSU, and it was there she began her life as a writer.

She began her master’s degree at SDSU as a poet in the creative writing program. After a year, she drove her computer and her cat across the country and took up residency in upstate New York to attend Syracuse University. She earned her M.A. in American Literature in 1993.

With her M.A. in hand, she realized she was educated for everything but trained for nothing. She was lucky enough to land a job as the senior fiction editor for an international literacy publishing company where she learned to love the business of books.

After stints as a university writing teacher, law student, legal writing professor, and having raised the Kid with Perfect Hair, Susan is now focused on practicing law and writing fiction. She writes from the lush landscape of the Finger Lakes Region of upstate New York where she lives with her husband and two literate cats (they must be literate after so much time spent lounging all over her books).