Janci Patterson

Raised in Orem, Utah, Janci Patterson never quite fit into one creative mold. She started college as a hopeful engineer before discovering her real calling in a creative writing class at Brigham Young University. The shift wasn't just academic—it was the beginning of a lifelong curiosity about how people hide, change, and come undone. That curiosity has since become the spine of her fiction.

Patterson’s debut novel Chasing the Skip gave readers a first look into her fascination with morally gray characters and complicated family dynamics. From there, she expanded into speculative territory with the A Thousand Faces series, a genre-bending exploration of shapeshifting, lies, and identity. Her writing style is clean, direct, and emotionally honest—favoring depth over drama, and subtlety over spectacle.

More recently, she’s become known for co-authoring novellas in Brandon Sanderson’s Skyward Flight series. In Sunreach, ReDawn, and Evershore, she seamlessly slips into a universe of galactic warfare and resistance, writing with the same psychological nuance she brings to her solo work. It’s not just space battles and high-tech ships—it’s about loyalty, fear, and who you become when everything familiar is stripped away.

Janci often collaborates under the pen name Cara Witter, teaming up with authors Megan Walker and Lauren Janes to write epic fantasy—yet even there, her signature themes persist: layered characters, hard choices, and the quiet resilience of people caught in impossible situations.

Outside of writing, she’s a game enthusiast, a reality TV connoisseur, and an unexpected expert in custom Barbie doll repaints—proof that storytelling can take many forms. She lives with her husband and children in the shadows of the Utah mountains, surrounded by books, projects, and probably more glitter than she’ll admit.