Hayes, Hunter 1970-

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HAYES, Hunter 1970-

PERSONAL:

Born 1970. Education: Manhattan College, degree in communications.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, HarperCollins, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Author. Worked variously as an escrow clerk in a bank and in the real estate business.

WRITINGS:

Shoes on the Otha' Foot, Stone Edge Press (New York, NY), 1998.

A Pair Like No Otha', Avon Books (New York, NY), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

After studying communications in college, Hunter Hayes embarked on a career in business. When success proved elusive, however, she remembered a professor's suggestion that she become a writer and decided to heed this advice. Setting down to work as methodically as she had tried to build her first career, she self-published her first manuscript. Though Hunter found this effort daunting because of all the marketing involved, the effort paid off when the book caught the eye of many delighted readers, and she was eventually offered a two-book contract by a large publishing house.

Shoes on the Otha' Foot is Hayes's first romance novel. Set in Harlem, it concerns two protagonists. Leslie is twenty-one and single, a strong-willed woman who values independence and ambition. She works days as an apartment manager, and takes classes at night to learn the mechanics of television production. Problems ensue when she falls in love with an older man who is already living with another woman. Leslie becomes the woman-in-waiting, a position that does not sit well with her vision of herself. At the same time, Leslie's friend Rachelle, a single mother of three, is unhappy about her emotional dependence on her two boyfriends. In the course of the novel both women slowly realize that they need to turn their lives around. A Publishers Weekly reviewer commended Hayes for the "admirable clarity" of her prose and her "unpretentious and honest" storytelling.

Hayes's second novel, A Pair Like No Otha', follows the lives of four high school friends, Darnell, Terrance, Ohija, and Shemone, who have followed different paths. Nine years after graduation, Shemone begins a romance with the incarcerated Darnell when she visits him with news that their friend Terrance has died in a car accident. Darnell is eventually released from prison, and Shemone must decide whether to allow their friendship to develop. "This entertaining story," wrote Lillian Lewis for Booklist, "follows the plight of a successful African American woman involved with an ex-convict determined to realize his full potential."