Leslie Esdaile Banks: New York Times and USA Today Best Selling Author

Ms. Banks is a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania Wharton undergraduate program, and alumnae of Temple University’s Master of Fine Arts in filmmaking program. Ms. Banks began her career in corporate marketing for several Fortune 100 firms and worked as an executive for over a decade at Xerox, Hewlett Packard, and Digital Equipment Corporation. She then subsequently evolved her veteran marketing experience into a solid entrepreneurial career as a marketing consultant within the economic development and community-based organization environment.

In 1992, Banks added another facet to her career, entering the publishing industry. She writes under the pseudonyms; L.A. Banks, Leslie Esdaile, Leslie E. Banks, Leslie Banks, and Leslie Esdaile Banks. She has won several business as well as literary awards, and has penned over 30 novels and 10 novellas in genres as diverse as romance, women’s fiction, crime suspense, and paranormal. She has contributed to magazines, newspaper columns, and has written commercial fiction for five major publishers simultaneously: St. Martin’s Press (NYC), Simon and Schuster (NYC), Kensington Publishing (NYC), BET/Arabesque (NYC), and Genesis Press (MS), now adding Parker Publishing to the list.

Banks’ writing career took a new twist in 2000 when she won the coveted contract with Paramount/Showtime in collaboration with Simon & Schuster/Pocketbooks to write a book series for the popular cable network television series, Soul Food. From there, Banks transitioned into another hot genre—the world of paranormal fiction, where she is currently penning a 12 book Vampire Huntress Legend series under the pen name, L.A. Banks, for St. Martin’s Press: “Minion,” (June 2003), “The Awakening,” (January 2004), “The Hunted,” (June 2004), and “The Bitten,” (January 2005), “The Forbidden” (July 2005), “The Damned,” released January 2006, and “The Forsaken” just released in July 2006, with additional titles to follow in 2007 thru 2008. In addition, Banks was recently signed to a St. Martin’s Press inspired paranormal romance anthology, entitled, “Stroke of Midnight,” contributing with Sherrilyn Kenyon, Amanda Ashley, and Lori Handeland, which hit the New York Times Bestseller extended list in 2004, Her story within that anthology, “Make It Last Forever,” tells of the back story of one of the key Guardians in her Vampire Huntress Legend series (Jack Rider), and how he joined the Guardian team. She has also contributed short stories to “My Big Fat Paranormal Wedding,” and “Love At First Bite” – both St. Martin’s speculative fiction anthologies. Look for a hot new werewolf series from Banks via St. Martin’s in 2007 as well.

She has also worked with other horror anthology collections, Dark Dreams I and Voices From The Other Side for Kensington Publishing. Her most recent project is the novelization of the movie, Scarface, for DH Press (under pen name, L.A. Banks), which takes a look at the main character’s life (Tony Montana) two years before he emigrated from Cuba to American in 1978. That novel will be released in March/April 2006. Currently she is working on the second book in that series.

Source: http://www.leslieesdailebanks.com/about.php