Donna's Biography

Donna Anders was in her early twenties when she made her first sale, a poem she sold to a children’s magazine for $1.00.  From those early years of writing juvenile poems and stories, to historical novels that balanced her life through some hard times, to suspense thrillers when she wrote about terror from her own experiences, Donna became a writer for life.

Donna can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be an author.  Writing has been her obsession since childhood and her window on the world.  She loved fairy tales before she could read, then mysteries, and later still developed an insatiable interest in history.  Hence the genres Donna has chosen for her writing.

Born in Tacoma, Washington, Donna and her family moved away from Puget Sound when she was ten, to Northport, Washington on the Columbia River a few miles south of the Canadian border.  The remote mountainous area that surrounds the town was once home to a lead smelter with high brick smokestacks and long brick tunnels, one-room schoolhouses, lumber mills, mines and old homesteads now long abandoned.  All of these settings became the background for Donna’s juvenile mystery stories years later.  Shortly after graduating from high school, she married and moved to New Jersey.  Her oldest daughter was born there.  Ultimately, she and her husband returned to the west coast, started a business and expanded their family to three daughters.

During the years when her girls were growing up, Donna sold almost 400 short pieces, including juvenile mystery stories, poems, articles and one-act plays.  Since many of her stories were serials and novelettes, it was a natural step into the world of the adult novel.  Her first published book, a 150,000 word historical saga set in San Francisco, FROM THIS LAND, was followed by two more sagas, three historical romance novels and eight psychological suspense novels.  She is currently writing her next book.  She has had several movie options, has been published by the national book clubs and is a recipient of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Achievement Award.  She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and was an instructor for The Writers Digest School for fifteen years.  Donna has spoken at numerous writing conferences around the country and always has an ongoing schedule of speeches and book signings.

Donna has many other interests, although she is dedicated to a strict writing regimen to meet her deadlines.  When she’s not working Donna enjoys seeing old friends, walking, reading, gardening, painting, traveling and hanging out with her three daughters.  She also loves browsing antique shops, visiting old cemeteries and ghost towns, and watching suspense movies.  She still hopes for more time so she can paint, her second love since childhood when she sketched everything in sight and everyone believed she’d grow up to be an artist.

Death Waits
For You
Available Now!
Lead title from
Pocket Books

"A suspense-filled exercise in terror...A triumph for Anders!" - Ann Rule