About
I became a writer to get out of trouble.
I became a writer when I found it easier to make up tales about my less-than-acceptable behavior than tell the truth. My mother called them lies. I called them stories.
I've been calling them stories ever since, and the job hasn't changed much: take somebody who has done something they shouldn't have, and make you root for them anyway.
I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, studied journalism and English writing at Duquesne, and wrote professionally in Florida and Atlanta before landing in Utah. I spent a long career making other people's words work. I don't take that work anymore — these days the only manuscript I'm fixing is my own, which is slower and considerably more annoying.
I write contemporary romance and Regency romance, which people tell me is an odd pairing. It isn't. Both are about women deciding what they're willing to risk to get the life they actually want — one of them just has better dresses.
Why the black sheep
Because I have never been the one who did the expected thing, and I have never been interested in writing anyone who was. The women in my books are the ones the room turns to look at — usually because they've just said something they weren't supposed to.
Rare breed. It's not a brand. It's a diagnosis.
The unimportant things
- Hot coffee, all day, no exceptions.
- Great scotch, occasionally, with intent.
- Fast thinker, slow writer. Painfully slow. Ask anyone.
- I read everything — mystery, biography, romance, the backs of cereal boxes.
- People intrigue me. This is why I eavesdrop in checkout lines.
The mailing list
Come Along, Then.
One story a month about somebody who had no idea I was listening. Book news when it's real, and not a word of it before. That's the whole arrangement.