Unexpected Pleasures

1948-03-28

Jayne Ann Krentz, née Jayne Castle is an American writer of romance novels. Krentz is the author of a string of New York Times bestsellers under seven different pseudonyms like "Amanda Quick".

9 August 1945

Barbara Ruth Greenberg was born on August 9, 1945, in Newton, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, where she raised in a family of lawyers. Her mother died of breast cancer, when she was eight, it was the defining event of a childhood that was otherwise ordinary. She took piano lessons and flute lessons. She took ballroom dancing lessons. She went to summer camp through her fifteenth year (in Maine, which explains the setting of so many of her stories), then spent her sixteenth summer learning to type and to drive (two skills that have served her better than all of her other high school courses combined). In 1967, she earned a B.A. in psychology at Tufts University and an M.A. in sociology at …

1950-10-11

Vicki Lewis was born on 11 October in Arizona, USA. She obtained a B.A. and a M.A. in English from the University of Arizona. She married Larry Thompson, and had two children. Vicki taught English, but it proved too restrictive when she discovered she didn’t like being trapped in a classroom any more than the students did. Journalism seemed like a better idea, except that she kept getting assigned to scary stories like rattlesnake milking or parachute jumping. Finally, her husband suggested she write a romance, which she took as a fine testimonial to their life together. Even better, the career was a perfect fit. Writing romances provides freedom from a schedule without fear of imminent …