After teaching German Language and Literature at Stanford
University, Queens College, New York, and Rochester Institute of
Technology, and publishing Salvation in the
Secular (a book on Thomas Mann), Justine Saracen left academics
and began writing fiction.
In the
world of the Internet, she discovered a public hungry for 'fan fiction. After
gaining attention with "Wanting Melosa," an Amazon love story, and
"Women in Prison," a deliciously smutty parody of prison movies of the
1950's, she gained a substantial readership with her romantic
story, "Lao Ma's Kiss". and her two-part
series, "The Pappas Journals" and "In the Reich" which tell the
harrowing story of two women archaeologists working in Europe during
WWII.
Her first great 'in paper' success was the desert adventure series called The Ibis Prophecy, published by Bold Strokes Books. The first novel. The 100th Generation, while primarily an adventure story, complete with mummies, temples and camel chases, also examines theological issues. In a world torn between fundamentalist dogma on the one side and godless consumerism on the other, the novel plays with the idea that ancient Egyptian animism might offer a solution. the sequel, Vulture's Kiss continues the adventure with some grim flashbacks to the First Crusade and the Fall of Jerusalem.
Her third novel Sistine Heresy confronts religion from another angle, by suggesting homosexual inspiration for Michelangelo's Sistine chapel.
She is currently at work on Mephisto Aria, a Faust tale, set in the opera world and WWII.
