An avid reader, Jessica Tastet began writing stories in the sixth grade because she devoured books at a pace of nearly ten per week, and she naively thought it would be easy to create a story that she wanted to read. The result was a mystery story she promptly shared with all her family and whomever she could convince to read it. Through this endeavor, she learned the first of many valuable writing lessons: don’t draw your characters too close to real-life people. Since then she’s earned a bachelors in journalism, an editing certification from the University of California at Berkeley and a MFA in Creative Writing from National University in California.
Born and raised in Raceland, Louisiana, near Bayou Lafourche she draws upon the places and people of her childhood to create the backdrop of her fictional South Louisiana town in her Raleigh Cheramie series. The Raleigh Cheramie series currently consists of Muddy Bayou, Muddy Grave, Muddy Hearts, Muddy Bites and Muddy Spirits. She is also the author of the women’s romantic fiction trilogy Family Treasure, Borrowed Treasure and Stolen Treasure as well as the paranormal suspense novel Valor. All of her novels have an element of mystery as she tends to be drawn to the idea of having to figure things out.