V.C. Stanley

Hello! This is Vickie, fiction readers will know me by V.C. Stanley, all of my non-fiction work is written under Vickie Chachere. Why the difference? Well, for 20 years I was a news reporter in Florida and now I am a speechwriter at the University of South Florida. I wouldn't want any confusion over which of my written pieces are real and which ones are imagined. That could be awkward!

I've written the YA mystery novel Jex Malone with my best friend C.L. Gaber (aka Cindy Pearlman). We wrote this mystery as a tribute to Nancy Drew and the great girl detectives by bringing our readers four modern girls who use their smarts to solve the cold case that destroyed Jex's family. We love this book and these characters, who are funny, tough, clever and fearless. Cindy and I have been best friends since the first day of college at Arizona State. We pursued different forms of journalism - she's an entertainment writer and I became an investigative reporter and crime writer - but we share a great admiration for fiction you can't put down, and we think we've created a pretty great story for our readers. I've tried to bring some insight from my years covering crime to the novel, unfortunately I've covered too many cases of girls who have gone missing. I have nothing but admiration for the families, police, forensic scientists, prosecutors, judges and juries whose lives are impacted by these crimes. I've also been lucky to have witnessed some amazingly brilliant detective work, and Jex Malone is our tribute to those sleuths who never give up.