Jane Elizabeth Smith was born in 1963 in Palmerton, Pennsylvania, to Reverend Ellis R. Smith, a minister in the Church of God, and his wife, Virginia. Jane was the youngest of seven children. By the age of ten, she was the only child left at home. She was a shy child who could entertain herself for hours with reading or pattern games such as laying out quilt blocks.

Jane's family moved periodically throughout her childhood. The family's roving was due to Jane's father moving from church to church. While Jane was in the fifth grade, the family moved to Champaign, Illinois where they resided for two years. The family then went on to Girton, Ohio for three years, but Jane's last two years of high school were spent in Youngstown, Ohio. Jane began writing poetry in eighth grade which followed her into her first years of college. In high school Jane became interested in liberal arts, such as, choir, art, and literature. The church politics that Jane experienced growing up had greatly colored her ideas about organized religion and the role of the Christian church. Jane attended, Anderson College in Anderson, Indiana., which was a family tradition, mostly because it was a conservative religious school.

As a way to fulfill a science requirement, Jane had taken a Computer Science class her freshman year. She found that she had a real knack for programming and an interest for technology in general. Computer Science allowed Jane to feel challenged. By the age of 21, Jane completed her bachelor's degree and graduated magna cum laude in Computer Science.

After college, Jane moved to Silicon Valley, California where she obtained her first dream job with Hewlett-Packard. For Jane, this was a great place to discover the world of 'adulthood'. The atmosphere at HP was professional yet down to earth. Employees would often show up to work in cut off shorts and Berkenstocks. Three years into the job, Jane realized that programming was not what she wanted as a life-long career. Feeling the need to be more creative, she found herself bored by the hardware end of programming, yet she did enjoy the logic of things. Jane began writing a novel called "Journey to Forever" which ended up taking her nowhere, feeling discouraged, she gave up writing and considered going back to college, but had a hard time figuring out which area she wanted to get into.

At the age of 24, Jane married a high-tech salesman with the last name, Jensen. Shortly after their marriage, He was transferred to Germany on business allowing Jane to take a break from work. She purchased her first PC in 1988, so that she could write overseas. She then bought her first few games for her new computer, namely, "King's Quest IV" and "Manhunter: San Francisco", both games were published by a game company called Sierra On-Line. These games were the birth of a new obsession for Jane. She was captivated by the capacity to tell a story on a computer screen, and how the story unfolded, as well as how a gamer had control of the main character. She was also in awe of the puzzles and what one would do to solve them in order to progress in the game. This merged many of her interests. After awhile, Jane's marriage began to disintegrate, after the divorce, she returned to the States and immediately wrote to Sierra On-Line, where she offered her services to them to be filled in any capacity, and sent them a short story, however, they had no openings at that time. Jane then took an engineering job in the San Francisco Bay Area. Finally, about a year later, she heard from Sierra, who had then decided to start a new writer's group. They expressed their interest in her story and her resume, and invited her for an interview.

In 1991, Jane, who felt that an opportunity like this only came along once in a lifetime, began working for Sierra, she was finally being paid to write. Not just write, but in a whole new medium that could end up taking her anywhere. To Jane, the possibilities were endless. Believing that interactive fiction could be a powerful new medium for story-telling, she had hoped to make her mark as an author in this new field, and to grow with the business as it became more mainstream. In the early years at Sierra, the work was intense and the politics was even more horrendous. Jane was used to a large, professional, cool-headed company, not a hierarchy of creatives who were maniacal, territorial, and 'vibrant'. Jane, who was all those things herself in spades, took a lot of pounding on the head to become 'professionally detached' about her writing, humility, and flexibility. It was a valuable lesson for any creative to master, but not one that's fun to live through.

In 1991, Sierra published "Ecoquest: Search for Cetus." The concept was by Bill Davis, Sierra VP. Another new writer, Gano Haine, and Jane turned out the details, puzzles, and dialogue. In 1992, Jane co-designed "King's Quest VI" with Roberta Williams, an experience that taught her the dynamics in designing and directing games. In 1993, Jane began her first solo effort (and her own concept), "Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers." It was an interactive mystery with a gothic edge -- gothic horror and mysteries being two of Jane's favorite things at that time.

The Gabriel Knight games and Jane's experience with Sierra gave her the chance to learn her own voice and to reach an audience. One of the memorable highlights was the day Jane stood with the GK1 team (her later-to-be husband, Robert Holmes, among them) and watched the production line package the first run of Sins of the Fathers. It hit Jane suddenly that she was a published author.

After the second GK game started filming, Jane began work on a new novel. The story being based on the one she had written for the first GK game. She found that the rigors of multi-directional plotting and the extensive dialogue the games required had made her a much better writer. The novel sold to ROC books and was published in 1997. They also published her novel version of the second GK game, The Beast Within, in 1998. Jane wrote the novel versions of the games "because software has such a short shelf life, and she was hoping to take the mystery series to a new audience." Shelved and marketed as "game tie-ins" the books sold primarily to existing GK fans.

In 1996, after four years of courtship, Jane married again. She and Robert Holmes live in Seattle, Washington, where they have joint-custody of Robert's ten-year-old daughter, Raleigh.

Jane has loved books her whole life. Her house is brimming with them. The goal of being a published novelist had finally been fulfilled. In 1996-97, Jane wrote her first "stand alone" novel entitled, "Millennium Rising". It was a great experience for Jane to work with a storyline that didn't involve thinking about the 'game' aspect of it, or worry about the budget for characters and locations. The book, a metaphysical thriller, sold to Del Rey books and was published in hardcover in October of 1999. Del Rey, a division of Random House, and editor Shelly Shapiro, had been a tremendous supporter and encouragement for Jane's career as a novelist.

The gaming industry, on the other hand, has sadly turned away from storytelling and towards action in the past few years. Gabriel Knight 3, entitled "Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned," was Jane's main project through 1997-99. It was one of the few adventure game titles released in 1999, and the fact that it was made at all is a testament to the reputation of the series. GK3 is interactive fiction at its most story-tellingist, and it is an old-fashioned bird in the new paradigm of Tomb Raider and Quake. The sales for the title were initially strong as the GK fans scooped it up, but quickly fell off the charts. While many bemoan the loss of intelligent story-telling in computer gaming, the masses -- and the sales -- reflect a different reality. Perhaps it's for the best. One of the strengths of the "Gabriel Knight" series was its appeal to non-traditional gamers. The current mood in the business is not supportive of either this audience or those who design for them. However, Jane still believes that interactive fiction will play a more mainstream role in the future, perhaps through the Internet.

Jane is currently enjoying a year of full-time concentration on her next novel, "Dante's Equation," an epic about good and evil, heaven and hell, physics and kabbalah. "Dante's Equation" will be published by Del Rey sometime in 2001. As Jane has matured, she has found her early interest in horror and the occult changing into a fascination with philosophy, history and comparative religions. She hopes that emphasis will continue to make her fiction stand out, whatever form it takes.