Jerrianne Hayslett

My Story

My writing journey began after my husband Hilbert (Hibbie) joined the U.S. Air Force and we had children. His military assignments took us to California, Taiwan, upstate New York, to my native state of Virginia while my husband served a year in Southeast Asia, and then to Michigan. Everywhere we went was an adventure I wanted to share. I started writing about them and sending stories to small magazines. Then Hibbie was sent Iran. He was assigned to serve as an advisor to the Imperial Iranian Air Force. It was an accompanied tour, meaning the children and I could go too. Oh, the sights and sounds and smells. The culture, the color and the people. Talk about an adventure! But that adventure ended abruptly with the Islamic Revolution. The children and I were evacuated from that hostile and dangerous environment not knowing when—or even if—Hibbie would be able to leave that country. With that experience and the weeks of waiting, worrying and not knowing, my writing took a more serious turn. Once Hibbie got out of Iran and home safely to us, I returned to college, which I had left when I got married. After earning a degree in communications, I worked for a number of years att newspapers in California and Las Vegas. My journey took another turn when I left the newspaper business to become the Los Angeles County Superior Court's first-ever information officer, which included serving as liaison between the court and the news media. My adventures at that job began right away with a trial that drew national attention of four L.A. police officers who severely beat motorist Rodney King. That was the first in a parade of high-profile and notorious trials over the next 10 years that consumed the court, the news media and me. After retiring from the court, I published Anatomy of a Trial: Public Loss, Lessons Learned from the People vs. O.J. Simpson, which goes behind the scenes and into the judge's chambers of that notorious trial. During my newspaper and court years, I fed my creative streak with children's books—creating as well as reading them. In our new home in Wisconsin, where we moved to be near family, I joined writing groups, worked on revising and refining the stories I had written and creating new ones. Eventually, Valiant Vel: Vel Phillips and the Fight for Fairness and Equality became my first published book for young readers.