Jan Richey King
Jan Richey King is a new children’s book author. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. After retiring from a 30-year career in technology sales, she decided to turn to her creative side. She had the idea for “Lucy and the Magic Shell” because she loves magical stories and the power of positive thinking. She merged these two concepts and visualized Lucy as the lucky girl who finds the marvelous, magical conch shell.
Jan had the original story idea that started with a basic notion of a magic shell – but the story was meant to be a romantic time-travel story. The girl that finds the shell on the beach would be whisked back into time. A lover of the books by Diana Gabaldon, “The Outlander Series”, she realized that a time-traveling novel would be highly complicated, and not being a historian, she was stumped with how to move forward. Her friend and singer/songwriter, Jane Brody liked the time-traveling conch shell idea but suggested a “children’s story” instead, and from there a new story idea was born, and Lucy’s character and the magic began. With the encouragement of many friends and family that liked the idea of the story, Jan just kept writing and editing and letting the remaining ideas come from this new special creative place she had discovered. Growing up loving singing, studying music in college, and recently performing in a Women’s chorus, she always pictured her creative outlet would come to fruition through music – so it came as a pleasant surprise that she was able to let the creativity flow and bring this story to completion.
Jan is a San Francisco Bay Area native and lives with her husband Gary, and their dogs, Max and Bennie. They have two grown sons who also live in the Bay Area.