 Fame
& Fortune: Author Janet Evanovich
No mystery to her investing: She's 'Plum' conservative
|
You may know best-selling author Janet Evanovich by the brightly colored numerals, from "One for the Money" to "Twelve Sharp," on her funny, funky Stephanie Plum mystery series, but the energetic Jersey girl's career has been anything but by-the-numbers.
The fantasy-prone kid from South River once had her
heart set on being a painter and even earned her art degree from
Douglass College before realizing it was a commercial impossibility.
As plan B, Evanovich took up writing. Despite (or perhaps because
of) the fact that her first effort involved the adventures of a
fairy in a run-down fantasy forest, she soon found herself the go-to
comedy writer for two romance series, "Loveswept" and
"Second Chance at Love."
She churned out 12 romantic novels, four a year, before
that vein ran dry.
Enter plan C. Evanovich left the bodice-ripping to
others, spent two years retooling her career with the aid of beer
and Cheez Doodles, and emerged with a fully formed, smart-aleck
heroine named Stephanie Plum, New Jersey's least likely bounty hunter.
Readers have come to love Stephanie's funny, sexy,
romantic misadventures with hunky cop Joe Morelli and mysterious
fellow bounty hunter Ranger Manoso as much as they enjoy the trials
and tribulations of Italian hottie Connie Rosolli and African-American
partner Lulu, her sisters in bond enforcement at her cousin Vinnie's
shop.
Evanovich's salty blend of mystery, romance and wisecracks
has won her automatic status on The New York Times best-seller list
the past seven books. Last year, she revved up a new Miami-set series
with "Metro Girl" that features female mechanic Alexandra "Barney"
Barnaby and her NASCAR driver hunk Sam Hooker.
Today, the author and her husband divide their time
between homes in New Hampshire, Boston and Naples, Fla., which serves
as home base for Evanovich Inc., the family business. Son Peter
handles the finances while motorcycle-riding daughter Alex serves
as Web master and promotions director.
Bankrate flagged down the indefatigable Evanovich
on a book tour stop for a little one on one.
Bankrate: You've come a long way for a Jersey girl.
Janet Evanovich: Yeah.
I'm second-generation American. My grandparents immigrated and my
dad worked in a factory. I was the first to graduate from college.
Even my success, I wasn't the "Harry Potter" miracle;
I really scratched and clawed my way up the line.
Bankrate: You were part
of the sisterhood from the romance genre who successfully reinvented
yourselves as crime writers in the '80s.
Evanovich: One of the
things that happened was that the "women's fiction" umbrella became
very large. Originally, romance was this narrow genre and mystery
was this narrow genre, and then you started seeing elements of both
genres mixing together, along with some paranormal. There was just
an expansion all around, to where you had people like Sue Grafton
and Tami Hoag coming in. Sue was never a romance writer but she
certainly enlarged mystery because you had women, who traditionally
had been writing "cozies," all of the sudden writing hard-boiled.
So you had the female point of view in a hard-boiled mystery, which
meant that the mystery went from being plot-oriented to character-driven,
because that's really what women do well.
Bankrate: You "made your
bones" in the hard-boiled mystery world by using humor. If it was
dominated by wise guys before, you were one of the original "wise
gals," right?
|
