Jo Schaffer Layton was born and raised in the California Bay Area in a huge, creative family. She is a YA novelist, speaker, writer at BYUtv, works in film production and is a Taekwondo black belt.She's a founding member of Writers Cubed and co-founder of the Teen Author Boot Camp, one of the largest conferences in the nation for youth ages 13-19. She and a crew of local and international bestselling authors present writing workshops to hundreds of attendees at the Utah-based conference as well as hundreds of others worldwide who view the conference online.Jo loves being involved in anything that promotes literacy and family. She is passionate about community, travel, books, music, healthy eating, classic films and martial arts. Her brain is always spinning new ideas for books and sometimes she even gets around to blogging.Jo is mom to three strapping sons and two fun bonus kiddos. She lives in Texas with her hunky tattooed husband.