My internal life didn’t match the life around me.” I spent a lot of time sitting in trees, watching people. I was a baton twirler in high school, but I couldn’t throw and the baton broke my nose. “I’d run around pretending to be a reindeer and dig holes in people’s lawns with my ‘hooves.’ Or I’d walk down the street singing opera. “I wrote it for myself and my fans.”Ī native of New Jersey, Evanovich grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood and was a dreamer who never quite fit in. The Recovery Agent was different: “I didn’t give a crap if anybody was going to like it!” she says.

Evanovich says she was filled with angst when she wrote the first Plum novel because she wasn’t sure it would be successful. The women are opposites, but they both have charm in spades. Unlike Plum, who hangs out in New Jersey and keeps her gun in a cookie jar, Rose is a globe-trotting fashionista who expertly handles weapons. She’s written romance novels and adventure and mystery series, including the Fox and O’Hare and the Lizzy and Diesel books, and the wildly popular Stephanie Plum series (28 installments and counting), about a New Jersey bounty hunter with a tangled love life-and a weakness for junk food (just like Evanovich). “She’s my Indiana Jones.”Įvanovich’s books have sold more than 90 million copies, according to Atria, and have been translated into 40 languages. “I probably enjoyed writing this one more than any other,” Evanovich says of the book, which finds Gabriela traversing jungles in Peru and Costa Rica. It centers on Gabriela Rose, a treasure hunter for hire-and a descendant of the pirate Blackbeard-whose sexy ex-husband routinely complicates her life. She signed a four-book deal, said to be for eight figures, with Atria in 2020, and in March 2022 she’s releasing The Recovery Agent, the first book in a new series. It’s good.”Įvanovich, 78, has been making moves lately. “At this point I just follow my grandkids around the country,” she says.

She moved from Florida to Chapel Hill to be closer to her daughter, Alex, and her grandson she also has a condo in Hawaii, where her son, Peter, and his children live. I’m not equipped for video.” The author is in her bedroom, surrounded by boxes, at a makeshift writing desk, her fluffy white dog at her feet. 'I just bought a house in North Carolina and I have absolutely no furniture,” Janet Evanovich says via Zoom.

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