Laura K. Curtis gave up a life writing dry academic papers for writing decidedly less dry genre fiction. A member of RNA, MWA, ITW, and HWA, she has trouble settling into one lane. While she is best known as a writer of romantic suspense, she has also written contemporary romance novels and short crime fiction. Her first “weird” story was published in 2015’s Protectors 2: Heroes anthology and she knew she’d found a new genre to love.

“It’s easier to sell yourself if you only write in one genre,” she tells people when speaking on branding at conferences, “I just can’t make myself do it.”

While the genre-hopping is natural for someone like Laura who comes from a family chock-full of ADHD, the conference circuit is an outgrowth of her background in education. She’s taught middle school in New York, high school in St. Louis, and college in Texas, and loves speaking to groups about anything and everything.

Laura wrote her first book in first grade. You can see it right here:

It was released (in notebook paperback, naturally) to rave reviews, and she’s been trying to achieve the same level of success ever since.

To date, she has published four romantic suspense novels, two contemporary romances, and multiple short stories, none of which her mother thinks are as good as The Speshel Dog.