V.J. Rose

V.J. Rose is the author of several novels set in the New and Old West. She was a 2014 Western Writers of America Spur Finalist for her short fiction story about an attorney on his first murder case, “A Promise Broken, A Promise Kept.”

Born in a small Texas town with a bad reputation left over from its wild post-Civil War days, she grew up listening to tales of shootings and lynchings, while in the meantime devouring her grandmother’s romances and her mother’s mysteries. She’s worked a plethora of jobs, almost always with the public, working in a dry cleaners; convenience stores; grocery stores; going door to door for a state funded survey, and later for the federal census. In the meantime, she contracted the building of a small home, doing much of the interior work herself.  Later, she went to barber school and opened her own barbershop. But, she couldn’t deny a lifelong love of writing, and throwing herself into it, earned a degree in journalism in her fifties, attending universities first in East Texas and later in West Texas.

Her life’s journeys are reflected in her work that includes nonfiction stories in the Texas Folklore Society anthologies and magazines articles appearing in Lost Treasure, Roundup, The Tombstone Times, and Backwoods Home. A phone interview with actor Fess Parker culminated in an article for Ranch & Rural Living. She lives with her son, Dan, two cats, and a dog in Central Texas, ten miles from where she grew up.