CJ Daly Books in Order

If you want the full story from the beginning: The Academy → Cadet-in-Training
If you like romantic suspense and secret institutions: The Academy → Cadet-in-Training
If you want more Academy training, pressure, and shifting loyalties: The Academy → Cadet-in-Training

CJ Daly was born in Portales, New Mexico, and grew up on a family ranch on the eastern plains with six siblings. Life there came with chores, responsibility, and a lot of open sky. It also gave her a reading habit early. She has said that while other people may have thought she was helping out, she was often sneaking behind dusty hay bales to read and imagine how stories could be told differently.

That mix of hard work and daydreaming still feels like the backbone of her writing.

After high school, Daly left eastern New Mexico for Dallas. She started college at Southern Methodist University, then transferred to the University of North Texas when money and practicality forced a reset. She earned a degree in English literature, picked up her teaching certification, and spent several years teaching middle school. She has described those classroom years with a sense of humor, which makes sense if you've ever tried to keep a room full of middle schoolers focused on language and literature.

Teaching paid the bills, but writing kept tapping her on the shoulder.

For a while, real life came first. Daly married, had two sons close together, and focused on family and work. Then she began writing in earnest. Finishing The Academy became a real turning point for her. By her own telling, getting to the end of that book sent her running out the back door cheering, because it meant the story that had lived in her head had finally made it onto the page.

She did not take the smooth, traditional route after that. Daly has spoken openly about turning away from publishing arrangements that did not feel right and choosing to self-publish instead. That choice meant learning a lot of extra jobs besides writing, from formatting and promotion to talking directly with readers, even though she has also described herself as an introvert. It was more work, but it let her keep creative control over the stories she wanted to tell.

Her best-known work is The Academy Saga, which opens with The Academy and continues in Cadet-in-Training. The series begins with Kate Connelly, a young woman from rural New Mexico who gets pulled into the orbit of a secretive military institution after her family is targeted. Readers who click with Daly's books usually seem to respond to that mix of small-town roots, hidden agendas, emotional loyalty, and romance that never stays simple for long.

The setup may sound large in scale, but Daly's stories work because she keeps the emotional stakes close. Family loyalty matters a lot in her fiction. So does intuition. Her characters often sense that something is wrong long before they can prove it, and that tension gives her books much of their nervous energy. She also returns to certain kinds of people again and again, stubborn young women, protective men with messy motives, and institutions that promise safety while asking for obedience in return.

She writes with a clear feel for place, too. Even when her stories move toward training programs, missions, and secret power structures, there is often still a trace of the New Mexico landscape in the background, dust, distance, and the sense that danger can appear suddenly in an otherwise ordinary life. That helps her work sit in an interesting space between romance, suspense, and coming-of-age drama.

These days, Daly lives in Dallas with her husband and two sons. Family life still seems to shape the rhythm of her days, whether that means school schedules, sports fields, or carving out time to write whenever she can. The ranch kid who read behind haystacks is still there. She's just the one telling the stories now.