[2] Shortly thereafter, she married Evan Maxwell, a now former newspaper reporter who spent over fifteen years working for the LA Times,[1] covering international crime.
After finally finding an agent to represent her, she was able to sell her first book, Change Ann Maxwell has written over 50 novels, some individually and some in collaboration with her husband.
[1] Another, A Dead God Dancing, was nominated for what was then called TABA (The American Book Award).
[4] Ann and her husband Evan, in conjunction with Ivar Ruud, a Norwegian polar bear hunter, published the non-fiction work The Year-Long Day in 1976.
The University of California gave one of the books, The Frog and the Scorpion, a creative writing award.
[5] Ann and Evan have also collaborated to write the novelization of the 1992 Val Kilmer movie Thunderheart.
Ann then writes the second draft, with the freedom to make any changes that she thinks are necessary for "clarity, pacing, dialogue, and characterization.
"[1] The first dedicated word processor was introduced after Maxwell had already become established as a science fiction writer.
She bought one immediately and soon found that she had tripled her productivity, as she was no longer forced to spend a great deal of time retyping her pages as she edited.
This enabled her to get ahead of her contract, so Maxwell began to look for another type of writing that she would enjoy, but that would pay better.
After reading several horror novels, Maxwell realized that she would not enjoy writing that type of fiction.
[1] This novel, and the more than thirty that have followed, are published under the pseudonym Elizabeth Lowell, a combination of Ann's middle name (Elizabeth) and Evan's middle name (Lowell), even though the books are written solely by Ann.