Alyssa Cole

About

Best-selling author of sci-fi, historical fiction, contemporary romance novels, and thrillers. She has 10,000 followers on Instagram and 20,000 on Twitter. Her book When No One Is Watching received the 2021 Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Paperback Original.

Before Fame

She has said that When No One Is Watching was inspired by the real-life gentrification she'd witnessed growing up in NYC and New Jersey. She grew up reading Mary Higgins Clark and Walter Mosley, as well as Anne Rice and Stephen King. Her 2015 sci-fi romance trilogy Off the Grid was picked up through a Twitter pitch contest run through Carina, the digital arm of Harlequin.

Trivia

She originally wanted to be a comic book artist. After college, she worked as a production editor of a science journal in Brooklyn. She enjoys listening to science podcasts like La méthode scientifique and La tête au carré, which are both in French. Cole's husband is French, and the two spend half the year in Martinique. As a child, she bought tabloid romances and changed descriptions of characters' "ivory" or "pale" skin to "brown."

Family Life

She was born in the Bronx, New York and growing up, divided her time between there and Jersey City, New Jersey. Her parents encouraged her insatiable appetite for books and reading.

Associated With

Her 2016 novel Let It Shine was inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog, which she read every day.