About Lisa
Lisa A. Traugott is an award winning and bestselling author of two historical fantasy novels, a memoir that led to her getting cast on American Grit with John Cena, and a Mom’s Choice Award winning children’s book which she wrote and illustrated.
As a kid she loved books, but her favorite thing was getting tucked in by her dad who would tell her fairy tales. While other girls enjoyed Cinderella, Lisa was all in for Little Red Riding Hood. There was something delicious about skipping off the path and finding trouble.
She graduated magna cum laude from Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, where she double-majored in theater and history. A classically trained actress, she did back-to-back national tours playing Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird and Anne Frank in an adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank.She performed classical theater Off-Broadway, did a Ford commercial and had five lines on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for which she still receives $5 royalty checks each quarter.
When the actors union went on strike, she decided she’d much rather be a well-fed realtor than a starving actress and became the younger person to be the property manager of Citibank Center, a 47-story high-rise in downtown Los Angeles.
During the Great Recession money was tight, her business was failing, marriage on the rocks and her doctor told her she was borderline obese. And that’s when the invitation to her 20th high school reunion came. Because God has a sense of humor. Desperate to try anything that would help, she signed up for a bodybuilding competition knowing absolutely nothing about the sport and began blogging about her experiences on ShesLosingIt.com.
The experience changed her life. She turned her blog into a book, lost 50 pounds and fixed her messy life in the process.
That led to her actually winning bodybuilding bikini competitions and getting cast on the reality-TV show American Grit hosted by John Cena. Her story was featured on Muscle & Fitness Hers, Good Day Austin, Fox (Austin), Great Day Houston and Bikini.com.She became a personal trainer, did bodybuilding competitions, wrote for Bowflex.com, homeschooled her kids for three years and got an English bulldog named Bruno. (His flatulence was legendary.)
She also did a quirky little thing called her annual birthday scare. It’s kind of like having a bucket list, only instead of doing everything at once then dropping dead, she does one thing per year then eats cake. Birthday scares included jumping out of a plane, starting a blog, doing five-minutes of stand-up comedy, running a Spartan Race and taking six weeks of ballroom dancing with Henri to learn how to do the lift from Dirty Dancing. (Ask if Henri wanted to learn the Patrick Swayze role. He did not.)
During the pandemic the gym where she worked closed and she and her husband decided to sell their business. She went back to her love of storytelling and began writing To Rescue a Witch and wrote the prequel To Condemn a Witch a year and a half later.She has written and performed Celtic Myths, Magic and Witch Trials at numerous Celtic festivals, libraries and book stores, where her family helps her sell her books and her son sometimes participates in the show. She’s loving being a late bloomer and embracing her creative side as she enters Act II of her life. She can’t wait to see what happens next, because she always loves a good story.
