About
Judy Willmore Author
Judy Willmore was born and raised in Pasadena, CA. She is a former reporter, then for twenty years a private investigator specializing in insurance fraud. Then a big change—she moved to New Mexico for graduate school. Fascinated by the Affair of the Poisons, she worked on The Menagerie while getting her MS in Clinical Psychology at New Mexico Highlands University. Judy is now a psychotherapist in Albuquerque and also an astrologer specializing in psychological astrology. She is currently writing a sequel to The Menagerie.
Ever since I was a child, I have wanted to write a novel. But there were so many other things equally fascinating! I love digging for the truth, so I was first a reporter, then that led to being a private investigator. I wound up with my own agency in Pasadena CA investigating insurance fraud, but through all that I still wanted to write. I found the story of the Affair of the Poisons, and I knew that was what I wanted to write about. I went back to college to learn French and started reading. But I was also reading anthropology, theology, psychology, and mythology, learning how to dig down into the human psyche. Astrology helped me understand who and what I needed to be: a psychotherapist. When the entire insurance defense industry bottomed out in 1995, I took off to to Las Vegas, New Mexico. I enrolled at New Mexico Highlands University with a double major in Native American Studies and Psychology, with a minor in Religious Studies. I went on to get a MS degree in Clinical Psychology. My thesis was on diagnosing and treating depression among the Navajo.
And now I could finally write my book. I joined a local writers’ group where I met my dear friend Johanna Keenan who became my first editor. The Highlands library helped me find the primary sources I needed for The Menagerie, and between semesters I kept writing. I graduated in 2004 and started working, bouncing from job to job, and kept writing. I got cancer, and I kept writing. Two hip replacements, and I kept going. The book grew and grew, but now it was too long! I finally found an editor, Lisa McCoy, who helped me rethink, focus, and cut. She introduced me to Geoff Habiger of Artemesia Publishing, and now, years later, I am finally published.