JOHN ZAISS
ABOUT
I didn't harbor any illusions about writing fiction while growing up in Omaha. In fact, kind of the opposite. I earned a degree in business administration from Creighton University and became a CPA, then worked for an international accounting firm in Omaha and Dallas. I eventually left the accounting industry and launched a successful career as a financial advisor. But...
I was always an avid reader and, like many, often thought to myself after reading a book...I could do that! With a demanding career and three small children, squeezing in time to write was challenging and exhausting. I persevered. Enduring four a.m. alarm clocks and capturing other precious time fragments on airplanes and in hotel rooms, I finished A Dedication (Synergy Books 2005) which is now in its second edition.
A personal family story reignited my writing career and is the genesis for my second novel, Love Lizzie. My aunt suffered from rheumatic heart disease and was warned by doctors to never have children. But the baby boom generation was well under way, and she and her husband decided to have a family. Three children later, she died of heart failure at age 38. Love, Lizzie is not my aunt's biography--it is fictional, yet it is a too often untold story about a woman who is forced to live by rules created and enforced by men.
Tough Girl, my latest book, is a suspense novel, so a lot different than my others. It was fun to introduce some intrigue into this story of two women who are reunited under suspicious circumstances sixteen years after a traumatic night as teenagers.
Writing is now an almost daily activity as my wife and I (and our golden doodle) enjoy our home in beautiful Whitefish, Montana.