Her third win, for The Texan's Reward, led to her immediate induction into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. She has won three Romance Writers of America RITA Awards,–the highest award given to romance novelists– in 1992, 1995, and 2006. By 1991, Thomas was able to quit teaching to become a full-time writer. It won a Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award for Best Western Romance and was designated a National Press Women Novel of the Year. Thomas's first novel, Beneath the Texas Sky, met with critical success. As a compromise, she took her husband's first name as her pen name. When she sold her first book, publishers suggested that her surname, Koumalats, was too ethnic. By 1988, Thomas had begun writing in earnest after work. She also sold many short stories for children, most averaging about 244 words. Her first published work was an article for the Oklahoma Daily about the Llano Cemetery in Amarillo.

In 1984, worried that teacher salaries would be insufficient to save for her children's college education, Thomas began writing. Both husband and wife became teachers, and for the next fifteen years Thomas taught family living at Amarillo High School. The couple then returned to Amarillo and had two sons. Thomas married Tom Koumalats and spent several years travelling while he served in the United States Army. She has a master's degree in Family Studies. She grew up in Amarillo, Texas and moved to Lubbock to attend Texas Tech University.

Jodi Thomas is a fifth-generation Texan, whose grandmother was born in Texas in a covered wagon.

In 2006, she was inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. Jodi Thomas (born Amarillo, Texas) is the pen name of Jodi Koumalats, an American author of historical romance novels, most of which are set in Texas.

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