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I've
been book crazy my entire life. When my mom would tell me
to go to bed, I'd hide in the bathroom just so I could read a few
more pages. In the afternoons, I'd play with my dog, Misty, in the
backyard and tell her elaborate stories of princesses and Indians,
dressing the dog up to play the part.
I grew
up in Anaheim, California, home of Disneyland. When I was 12, I
started my first novel, about a boy growing up with a race horse.
I only managed to get about ten pages into it, but the seed of ambition
was planted. I wrote short stories throughout junior high and high
school, and entered college as a creative writing major. Unfortunately,
the pressure of writing literary short stories weekly for a college
course was far different than writing one story a semester in high
school and that was the end of that.
Shortly after, now as a geology major, I read about category romance
in a Sunday supplement and decided to give it a try. My first effort
brought together an aviatrix and a cowboy and had a great scene
in which the heroine airlifted a sick ranch owner in the midst of
a thunderstorm. Unfortunately, it didn't have much else. A few years
later, now as an engineering major, I decided to try again with
a book about a lady architectural engineer and the gorgeous owner
of a shipping company. This time, I had a cute meet and a great
kiss scene, but still no real plot or conflict. I tossed it after
three chapters.
The next
year, this time as a physics major, I came up with a plot about
a firefighter and an engineer. Things were looking good when I thought
about plot points and conflict and actually developed a solid story
line. A couple of chapters later, though, I moved away to attend
grad school in Orlando, Florida, home of Disney World (are we seeing
a pattern here?). The manuscript moldered in my closet.
After
graduation, I worked in Connecticut on the mirrors for a NASA x-ray
telescope now orbiting the Earth. Writing kept calling to me, though.
I quit engineering and moved to New Hampshire to join the editorial
staff of an engineering trade magazine. There, I met and fell in
love with my husband, Stephen. Suddenly all those romance novels
made a heck of a lot more sense.
Thus,
plot possibilities followed me when I left the editing spot to join
a business-to-business dot com (where we were paper millionaires
for a heady 30 seconds). Around that time, a publisher tried to
recruit me to launch a print magazine for an engineering society.
Driven by the conviction that it was time to finally finish one
of those danged books, I took the job and negotiated a four-day
work week that would allow time to write.
This
ambition coincided with the announcement of the Blaze line. Inspired
by a presentation at a writers' conference, I plotted out a Blaze
novel on the plane home and wrote the draft of Chapter One that
night. Ten months later, I typed the words THE END and did victory
laps around the living room. My Sexiest Mistake sold to Harlequin's
Blaze line in September 2001 for publication in June 2002. My upcoming
three book series will be released by Blaze in 2003.
I currently
live in New Hampshire with Stephen (he's also a magazine editor),
who is my critique partner, copy editor, web master, and master
of my heart.
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