Tom E. Huff
Personal Information
Description
Thomas Elmer Huff was born on 08 January 1938 in Tarrant, Texas, USA. He graduated from Poly High School and from Texas Wesleyn College in 1960. For several years, he was a popular English teacher at R.L. Paschal High School, remembered as a spinner of first-person yarns and a resolutely independent soul. "He got peeved at the principal one day," recalls history teacher Zelma Rhodes, "and he up and quit." Single, he lived quietly in a plain, two-story brick home with his mother, Beatrice, in Fort Worth, Texas. To preserved his identity, he made himself as elusive and reclusive as possible during years. Long a dabbler at writing, Tom researched laboriously and wrote and rewrites with his typewriter in a tidy workroom. Published since 1968, during the first nine years he wrote under the female pseudonyms Edwina Marlow, Beatrice Parker, T. E. Huff, and Katherine St. Clair. "You just work like hell and maybe, if you're lucky, you'll make it," he said "I had to turn out three gothics a year to make a living." He also explained the use of female identities: "There's a certain mystique about this stuff, you see," he says earnestly "If those women who buy my books ever get the idea that a man has written them, it could put a block in their minds." In 1976, when he began writing historical romance novels, he created his most famous female pseudonym Jennifer Wilde. His first release, Love's Tender Fury, had 41 printings in its first five years and sold more than 2.5 million copies, and his second historical romance, Dare to Love, spent 11 weeks on the New York Times paperback bestseller list. His historical romances were noted for being written in first-person, from the heroine's perspective. Many of his books also featured multiple male protagonists, and "the man who first captures the heroine's heart isn't always the one who ends up with it." Curiously, about his romance novels he said "aren't the real Tom E. Huff. I don't take the genre seriously-but I take my work seriously. My goal has been to reach a point where I can write what I want to.The Jennifer Wilde thing will be over with," he sighs, adding as if in pain, "I don't relate to her at all." In 1980, he wrote a novel as Tom E. Huff, but he continued writing as Jennifer Wilde, and his previous novels were reedited in many cases under this pseudonym. Tom earned a Career Achievement Award in 1987-1988 from Romantic Times. He died suddenly of a massive heart failure on 16 January 1990 in Fort Worth, where he was buried.
Books
Meet a Dark Stranger = Whisper in the Darkness
In New York Times–bestselling author Jennifer Wilde’s spellbinding tale of romantic suspense, an ominous horoscope proves eerily accurate for a woman visiting a quaint English town “You will make a sudden journey and meet a dark stranger . . .” Author Jane Martin doesn’t believe in fate, so when she stumbles across her horoscope in the newspaper one day, she decides to disregard it. But then her widowed brother calls, asking her to take care of his children while he’s away at a science conference. He’s even booked her a first-class train ticket. En route to her brother’s house, Jane is accosted by one stranger only to be rescued by another. One of these handsome men is destined to come back into her life, because peaceful, centuries-old Abbotstown has been rocked by a string of bizarre burglaries—and a murder. There are no leads or suspects, but Jane’s precocious niece Rebecca insists she knows things the police aren’t aware of. After someone tries to break in to the house, Jane finds herself surrounded by too many men who say they want to protect her and the children. Suddenly she fears she is a pawn in a sinister intrigue in which she will not be able to distinguish hero from villain.
Nine Buck's Row = Susannah, Beware
When night must fall London's East End was in the grip of terror. The madman they called The Ripper was still on the loose and Susannah's aunt, the earthy, flamboyant Marietta, had been his latest victim, leaving Susannah stunned, alone in the world but for Nicholas Craig, the handsome cousin she'd never known, who now became her guardian. But from the moment Nicholas brought her to the quiet house at Nine Buck's Row, Susannah knew she was falling in love... falling in love with a man who refused to answer questions about his past... falling in love with a man who dared not offer her a future... falling in love with a man who, under the cloak of darkness, might well be her murderer....