Jan Hall:  In her 23-year Army career, Jan worked primarily in personnel and public affairs, serving her last four years in the Washington, D.C. area. Since retiring in Pensacola, Florida, she has held jobs ranging from a women’s assisted living facility administrator to ESE teacher and intervention specialist/behavior coach at two middle schools.

She has served as Chair of the Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival and currently serves on the Art Show and Emerging Artists Committees.

Jan’s writing/editing credits include articles and photos published in Climate and Pensacola Today magazines and the Pensacola News Journal, including several of its specialty publications.

She has participated in the “So, You Want to Write for the Pensacola News Journal” forum at then-Pensacola Junior College, as well as served as panelist for two sessions of a Gulf Coast Writers Conference in Panama City, Fla. In 2007 she was a featured speaker at the Friends of the Pensacola Public Library Meet the Author Series.

In 2006 Jan won the First Annual Florida Noir Festival noir script competition for The Red Heron, set in Pensacola in August 1941. In 2008 she won a national WOW! Women on Writing Honorable Mention for her flash fiction, Sex and Money, which also won 1st place in a Gulf Coast Writers Conference Gulf Coast Idol contest.

Jan’s books may be purchased through Amazon or other retailers or by email.

All cover designs, except Killing the Past, were designed by Jan’s husband, Ron, an award-winning digital designer.

 

BOOKS

Killing the Past -  Mystery (2006) 
**Won Pottersville Press’s 2nd Annual Novel Writing Contest in 2005.
After Maggie O’Brien’s fiancé was killed in Vietnam, she gets on with her life. His death charts her career path as an army officer. Twenty-three years later when she’s assigned to the Pentagon, she discovers he’s not dead. And he’s not who she thought he was. People he knew begin dying, and Maggie’s not sure whether he’s the killer—or will be the next victim.

Art Attack - Mystery (2007)
Artists run amok at the 2006 Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival! The idyllic setting of Seville Square provides a canvas for murder and mayhem. The trouble starts when an obnoxious artist, Manolo Friedman, proves to be a pain in the palette. From there, things go consistently—and literally—down the Port-a-let. And a killer’s painting the park red.

Deadly Ties - Mystery (2014):
This sequel to Blood Ties finds Taylor Walker awaiting the trial of the nemesis who tried to kill her. Her love life gets complicated by the arrival of a Cuban-American architect—who may have strangled his pregnant fiancée in Miami. A crime wave strikes the tiny panhandle town of Walker, Fla., where the crimes are somehow tied to Taylor. One murder mimics the dead socialite’s: This time the murder weapon is Taylor’s red bra: The work of the Miami killer or a copycat? Once again Taylor finds herself in a life-or-death situation with a crazed killer.

Peckerheads - Slightly Off-Kilter Love Story, which one reader referred to as a “trailer trash soap opera” (writing as Erin Jay Lachlan) (2011):
Cissy Norton comes across a whole passel of peckerheads in the fictional east Texas town of Sweetbriar. Peckerheads spans 26 years of Cissy’s life, starting with her marriage to “worthless as tits on a tomcat” Bobby Ray Riggs to her best friend LaWanda’s brother, Randy Wilkerson. An obstacle to her happily ever after with Randy may well be Cissy’s subject matter in her paintings: naked men.

(Un)Gone - Young Adult (Fantasy) (writing as Jan Hall) (2012):
At 13, Polly Cates had a hard time adjusting to her father’s new fiancée; her mother died when she was a baby, and she’s never had to “share” him before. On her father’s wedding day, he accidentally turns Polly into a polliwog. As everyone (except the wicked bride-to-be and her two brat offspring) searches for Polly, neighbors and friends rally in a weird and wonderful way. The neighborhood recluse joins forces with Polly’s artist father and pens The Polliwog Princess, a fairy tale included in the book.

Blood Ties - Mystery (2010)
**Finalist in the Mystery Category of the Writers’ League of Texas 2008 Manuscript Contest (as Blood Relations).
After a brutal rape and beating causes Taylor Walker Campbell to miscarry, the fictional panhandle town of Walker, Fla., rallies around her. She soon discovers her retired judge father ordered the attack to “protect” her after he discovered her brief affair with a 14-year-old black neighbor. Her life begins a downward spiral when those around her prove to be hiding secrets, some which could prove to be deadly.

Lost and Found:  A chance encounter at a Pensacola bar starts a deadly chain of events. As the reclusive Rutherford (Ford) Reilly nears his 50th birthday—and the 40th anniversary of the shark attack that cost him a shot as a child prodigy pianist—he decides to spill his guts to a stranger, who recognizes him as the “Miracle Kid.” The life-changing event left Ford with a burden of guilt: His younger brother was killed by a second shark. His older brother ran away a year later. His parents piled on money woes, leading to his father’s suicide on the second anniversary of the attack. Ford’s naiveté and social awkwardness expose him to barracudas of the two-legged female variety

Dawn Breaks,Mystery:  After a breakup with Kyle Yates and a miscarriage, Daundre (Dawn) Riley’s life spirals out of control. Dawn visits her Aunt Cleo, whose neighbor Tom Wallace still mourns the drowning of his wife, Holly. As Dawn and Tom unravel facts surrounding the accident, sinister secrets emerge from Holly’s past, threatening Tom’s family—and now Dawn. When Kyle mysteriously disappears, Dawn’s best friend implicates Ajay Khan. As a relationship blossoms between Dawn and Ajay, she realizes she must address unresolved feelings for Tom. Then a serious misunderstanding plunges Dawn into danger—with Ajay on the other side of the world.