About Lisa
Lisa is a debut author, sometimes screenwriter, and experienced trial lawyer.
A storyteller.
For more than 25 years, she was a litigator and equity partner in one of the world’s largest law firms, where she represented Fortune 50 companies and, on a pro bono basis, the neediest folks in Atlanta. She worked for a federal appellate judge and was the author for more than 15 years of annual employment law publications throughout the U.S. She’d say that taught her next to nothing about writing fiction … other than she’d rather be doing it.
On the personal side … Lisa graduated summa cum laude from Florida State, where she won the undergrad scholar award for her thesis on William Faulkner and T. S. Eliot. She’s a graduate, with high honors, from Duke Law School, where she won the legal writing award and was an articles editor on the Duke Law Journal.
She’s been a writer in training her whole life. And she’s good with a deadline.
Lisa has deep roots in Virginia and Kentucky—very deep, actually: from moonshiner to post-mistress, from farmer to governor. Before college, she lived for a decade in a small, character-filled town on the bayous of Northwest Florida—the inspiration for the Tim’s Bayou series. She’s also a trained, classical pianist; it doesn’t pay the bills, she says, but it keeps her sane. Lisa has twins, Kate and Libby, whom she describes as fabulous, and lots … and lots … of pets. Last and never least, she’s happily married to Tom Byrne, an accomplished lawyer and, in her words, “endlessly patient best friend.”
Other Projects
SHADY VALLEY
BY LISA COMBS JERN & ELIZABETH TRAVIS WARD
An ensemble, multicultural dramedy that revolves around an idyllic neighborhood full of secrets, a tech start-up, a senator’s office, and a large law firm. It’s a sendup of America’s surveillance capitalism and a universal tale about the struggle for love, friendship, and individuality.
KONNECTOLOGY
BY LISA COMBS JERN & ELIZABETH TRAVIS WARD
The offbeat cofounders of a small data broker company must navigate their close friendship, quirky staff, and the crazy world of selling people’s unlimited private data, all while battling their arrogant rival’s sneaky attacks.
THE BICYCLE: A TIM’S BAYOU MYSTERY
BY LISA COMBS JERN
When a missing girl’s bike, rusted and weather-beaten but with a shiny, new bell, mysteriously appears on her parents’ lawn many years later, the distraught couple convinces Atlanta police detective John Weber to return to Tim’s Bayou to locate their missing daughter, whom some of the town’s residents claim to have caught glimpses of, wandering alone near the marshy bayou coastline on the outskirts of town. But will a murder, and threats of even more violence, force John to abandon his search for the solution to this modern-day ghost story?