Bio
FOR AN OFFICIAL BIO FOR PRESS OR MEDIA PURPOSES, PLEASE SEE THE MEDIA ROOM PAGE.
When people ask if I always wanted to be a writer, the honest answer is no. What I wanted was to travel the world, have adventures, live a big, exciting life. So I got an undergraduate degree in Political Science from The Catholic University of America and a master’s degree in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, spending a year in Madrid as an undergraduate and a semester in Bologna, Italy for graduate school. And then I got a job on Capitol Hill . . . as an economist at the U.S. Senate. It was a job for which I wasn’t really qualified—I took all my econ classes pass/fail—but I had a high school English teacher who taught me how to write and that was my ace in the hole. One of the highlights of my life was thanking her for that gift shortly after she turned ninety; she was just as amazing then as she was in 11th grade.
I left the Senate after eight years on the Hill, but I continued getting jobs either by accident or for which I didn’t have any qualifications; in one case, I got a job I didn’t even apply for as Moscow reporter for ABC Radio News in the former USSR. I also worked as a freelance reporter for The Journal newspapers in Washington, D.C. (now the Washington Examiner) and as a freelance regional feature writer for The Washington Post. What they all had in common, though, was writing.
As for the big, exciting life overseas, I got my wish and then some: my late husband was a foreign correspondent for the Voice of America with assignments that took us to Geneva, Moscow, and London. It was also thanks to him that I slipped in the back door, becoming a journalist.
I wrote Moscow Nights, my first novel, while we were living in London in the 1990s. It was based loosely on our time in the USSR except no one was murdered and I was more involved with the activities of three small boys at the Anglo-American School than with meeting strangers under dark bridges—though we did worry about being spied on because we were.
It was my British literary agent who insisted I write a mystery based in a Virginia vineyard after I told her about a visit to the US one summer when I fell in love with Virginia’s beautiful, idyllic scenery—and a couple of charming vineyards. Although I insisted I wanted to write another book with a foreign setting, there was no way to argue when she said, “Ellen, you live in England. Virginia is a foreign setting. Write the book.” So I agreed to write . . . one.
More than 20 years and as many books later, I’m now writing the 15th book in the Virginia wine country mysteries, which will probably be released in 2028. I also wrote four mysteries based on an international photojournalist who moves from London back to Washington—a story that was more up my professional alley. The wine country mysteries are set not far from where I live now in the heart of horse and hunt country in the fictitious village of Atoka, Virginia. The main character, Lucie Montgomery, returns home from France after her father’s death to take over running the family vineyard on farmland that has belonged to her ancestors since the French and Indian War. What links the series together is a present-day mystery that always intersects with an event from Virginia’s rich, fascinating history. Lately, though, I am writing more and more about climate change and its impact on what we can grow, our weather, and the increasingly catastrophic consequences of a hotter earth.
Over the years, the books have been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and the Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award; The Riesling Retribution won the 2009 Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Best U.S. Wine Literature Book. The French Paradox was named a best mystery of 2021 by The Strand magazine.
I was born in Boston, but grew up mostly in Connecticut—with detours to Alabama and Pennsylvania—before moving to Washington, D.C. for university—and, after I was married, moving overseas. I now live with my partner in the D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia along with a tuxedo cat named Finnegan. Between us, we have five sons, four daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren who live in Virginia and Illinois (mine) and Massachusetts, New York, France, and Switzerland (his). I belong to Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers and the Literary Society of Washington.
For a different version of how I got published, you can read HOW IT HAPPENED in the (now-defunct) December, 2016 issue of International Thriller Writer’s online magazine The Thrill Begins.
