About The Authors

JoAnn Keith is the pen name of M. JoAnn Wright and Richard Keith Herlig. They concluded that a romance novel would best be written by a female sounding author, so they used a combination of their middle names.

Richard and JoAnn have been early morning buddies at a fitness club for many years. They have enjoyed exchanging short stories, mainly to lessen the monotony of their exercise routine.

Their first full-length novel, Just EMBs, was developed from a challenge. Richard ridiculed a romance novel being read by one of the ladies at the club. She challenged him to write a better novel—if he could. In other words, “put up or shut up.”

The challenge was accepted and Richard used his professional experience to research romance novels. He concluded that the characters in many of these novels were younger, and the stories were predictable. His novel had to be different.

He determined that many of the ladies at the club read while on the treadmill and stationary bikes. Most of these women were over fifty, so it was decided to cater to baby boomers by using large print and keeping the characters to a minimum. In addition, many of the characters in his novel would be older, so the readers could better relate to them. He then enlisted the assistance of JoAnn to help develop the female characters and write the “girl stuff.”