Like the main character of his novel \u201cI Become Her,\u201d Joe Hart is married. Unlike her, he has not murdered anyone. Or, at least, he jokes, \u201cNone that they\u2019ve caught me for.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not all Hart is cagey about. He lives in northern Minnesota, but prefers not to specify where, and he doesn\u2019t want to name his wife or two children, a daughter who recently had Hart\u2019s first grandchild and a son with nonverbal autism.<\/p>\n
This much, we know: Joe Hart is his real name, he\u2019s 42 and he writes ripping good yarns. That\u2019s evidenced by the Mystery Writers of America giving him their equivalent of an Oscar, the Edgar (Allan Poe), in 2023 for \u201cOr Else.\u201d And by his new \u201cI Become Her,\u201d in which Imogen is on a honeymoon cruise with her husband when she suspects he\u2019s been unfaithful and, perhaps accidentally, tosses him off the ship. He survives the fall, somehow, and his memories of what happened gradually return.<\/p>\n
Personal trainer-turned-full-time-author Hart has written two dozen novels in the 15 years since he decided to buckle down on his childhood dream of being a writer. <\/p>\n
\u201cAfter I self-published my first collection of short stories, it wasn\u2019t a lot of money,\u201d said Hart, who started tapping out short stories on his mom\u2019s electric typewriter when he was 9. \u201cI\u2019d sell a couple copies a day, if that. It wasn\u2019t until I started getting my feet wet with the marketing side of things that it slowly built. The first month, maybe you make enough for a tank of gas and, down the road, enough for a nice dinner. The goals keep increasing and you think, \u2018Maybe some day I can pay for our house payment every so often or we can afford another vehicle.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n