Gemma Halliday
Gemma had a hard time figuring out what she wanted to be when she grew up. She worked as a film and television actress, a teddy bear importer, a department store administrator, a preschool teacher, a temporary tattoo artist, and a 900 number psychic, before finally selling her first book, Spying in High Heels, in 2005 and deciding to be a writer.
Since then, Gemma has written several mystery novels and been the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Reader's Choice award and three RITA nominations. Her books have hit both the USA Today and the New York Times Bestseller lists.
Gemma now makes her home in the San Francisco Bay area where she is hard at work on her next book.
“Mom perched on the edge of our sofa, her forehead etched with a line of concern I'd grown to know well. It was the same one she'd flashed at me when I pointed to the twisty slide, the same one she'd pulled out when I'd taken up Tae Kwon Do in third grade, and the same one that had frozen on her features all through driver's ed last spring. It was her SMother face.”
Gemma Halliday
“Men. One minute they have their tongues down your throat and the next they're forbidding you from meeting your own father and criticizing your fashion choices.”
Gemma Halliday
“My theory: if the malls don't open until ten what's the point of being up earlier than that?”
Gemma Halliday
“She went in the pool," she finished for me. "Ohmigod. She was killed while tweeting. It was Twittercide!”
Gemma Halliday
“To say I didn't have great luck in the guy department was like saying Ryan Seacrest didn't have great luck in the height department: total understatement.”
Gemma Halliday
“ Chase leaned in close. "hey" What?Are you wearing perfume? No... why would I be wearing perfume?... You sure you're not wearing anything? It smells like jasmine. Must be the bushes”
Gemma Halliday
“The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the hippo squatting on my head.”
Gemma Halliday
“Bull-fluff. You didn't break up with a girlfriend of a whole year because of stuff.”
Gemma Halliday
“Connor Crane was currently the secret crush of half the female HHH population. And a couple of the males, too.”
Gemma Halliday
“I need to be casual but not too casual. Dressy but not too dressy. I need him to think I just threw on the first thing I found and that I'm not taking this too seriously or overthinking it or even that I was thinking about it at all. Because I'm not. I'm totally not thinking about him, and I don't want him to think I was thinking about him, but I don't want him to think that I'm not thinking about him, because clearly he thought about me enough to ask me out and it would be mean not to be thinking about him at all, so I need just the right amount of thinking, and I'm not sure if that means boots and a skirt or skinny jeans and ballet flats. Help!”
Gemma Halliday
“She shot me a sugar-coated smile. I matched it calorie for calorie.”
Gemma Halliday
“The first thing I did was run. Okay, actually the first thing I did was scream, lose my balance, flail my arms in the air like some kind of uncoordinated bird, then slide down the side of the tree and land on my butt.Then I ran.”
Gemma Halliday
“Mental face palm. Suddenly I wasn't sure there was enough room on the campus for both me and his ego.”
Gemma Halliday
“Earthquakes just happen. Tornadoes just happen. Your tongue does not just happen to fall into some other girls mouth!”
Gemma Halliday
“There are three things you never want to find in your boyfriend's locker: a sweaty jockstrap, a D minus on last week's history test, and an empty condom wrapper.Lucky me, I'd hit the trifecta.”
Gemma Halliday
“We actually wanted to ask you a few questions. About the interview you did this morning."At the mention of her KTVU debut, Caitlyn softened a little. "You saw that?"I nodded."How did I look on camera?"Her grief was touching.”
Gemma Halliday
“All men should be required to have their marital status tattooed on their foreheads.”
Gemma Halliday
“Okay, if there's one thing you don't ever say to a woman on the edge it's that she's hormonal.”
Gemma Halliday
“I took a deep breath. "I'm sorry I lied, I like your Star Wars sheets, you're not that bad of a driver, and I swear on my Very Cherry lip gloss that I will never lie to you again.”
Gemma Halliday
“Caw! Caw, Hartley, caw!"Chase narrowed his eyes again."Sam?"I nodded. Then crossed to the window again and called down to Sam. "You can quit squawking. He caught me.”
Gemma Halliday
“In the immortal words of Mr. Burns.......eeeeexcellent.”
Gemma Halliday
“I'll go," he said."And that's safer because?""I'm a guy.""Right, and having a pair of dingle balls makes you invincible how?”
Gemma Halliday
“That craptastical, gutless, son-of-a-cactus-humping butt monkey!!”
Gemma Halliday
“Our bodies are our temples. They should have a little more respect for themselves than that.”“You know, I could have sworn I saw you shoveling Cheetos into your temple last week.”“Oh, but I’m pretty sure those were nonfat,” Kaylee piped up.Oh brother.”
Gemma Halliday
“Why is it that when someone says "trust me", I always feel less inclined to do so?”
Gemma Halliday
“No matter how much I may love—scratch that, loved, past tense—Josh, I was no dummy. Everyone knows the Y chromosome carries with it the instinctive urge to lie under pressure.Which, incidentally, was what Josh was going to be under when I found him. Serious pressure.On his larynx.”
Gemma Halliday
“I didn't point out that Courtney and I were hardly BFFs. In Mom's world everyone under the age of eighteen was friends with everyone else, like we were all part of some secret society of minors.”
Gemma Halliday
“Jax Cassidy is a brilliant new voice in contemporary fiction. Full of heat, seduction, and romance, her winning characters are sure to capture your heart and find a place on your keeper shelf.”
Gemma Halliday