Janis Flores was born in Montana, grew up in Colorado, and vigorously resisted becoming a "Valley Girl," when her family was transferred to southern California’s San Fernando Valley, when she was a teenager.

She became a Medical Technologist after college graduation, but working in the lab left little time for writing anything but lab results and equations.

She married Ray Flores in 1968, one day after her 22nd birthday (not good planning there--but she figured he'd either remember the dates, or forget them both. To his credit, he's never forgotten either. Isn't that amazing?)

Jan supervised medical laboratories before she and Ray moved to northern California in 1972, where she began complaining how she hadn't had time to take writing in college. A man can only take so much, so Ray finally told her to quit whining and sign up for a course at the local college.

The course was on the short story, but as Jan seems to have a lot to say, she began writing her first book, a Gothic suspense called
Hawkshead, which was subsequently published in hardcover by Doubleday and Company.

That first book was quickly followed by two more Gothics,

• Peregrine House
• Gyrfalcon Hall

And then the best-selling historicals

• Bittersweet
• Cynara
• High Dominion

A move to Random House produced the contemporary mainstream novels:

• Loving Ties
• Running in Place
• Divided Loyalties

• Above Reproach
• Touched by Fire
• Siren Song

The author has also written category under the pseudonyms, April Thorne, and Risa Kirk.

Book by Book Press was born when Jan (with a growing number of other commercially successful authors) took charge of her literary life.

She wanted to decide

• how long her books should stay in print (forever, if she has a say about it, and now she does!)
• What the covers will look like
• What the contents will be
• And what she'll write in the future.

Now, in addition to bringing back (book...by...book...by book...) novels that New York publishers short-sightedly allowed to go out of print, Jan is working on other writing projects.

One is a historical trilogy of the 1800's west, as seen through the eyes of two very different women: one a newly married Englishwoman who learns about courage, friendship and endurance during a hard cattle drive across the Great Plains to Wyoming; the other, a destitute young woman forced into prostitution to survive, who reaches Cheyenne--and respectability--along a very different path.

Another is a trilogy about witches--but not witches as usually portrayed, either as comedic figures or evil old hags; rather, these are powerful, extraordinary women who sometimes struggle with their own temptations as they help a "human" at a crisis or crossroad in life. Think of it as "touched by a witch."