I've been reading since I was knee-high to a gnat. My mother taught me, the way she taught me all the good things in life. She read to me when I was little and then she bought me books of my own. Little Women, What Katy Did and Anne of Green Gables. I read them all until the covers fell off.
The only thing that is better than reading is ... writing. Bringing to life characters that you love so much that finishing the book, leaving them to get on with their lives without you, is the hardest thing.
I started writing when my children were small and my engineer husband, John, was working abroad. We'd met working in Zambia, Africa and had travelled the world together before settling down to raise our family.
My first Harlequin Romance, An Image of You, was set in Kenya, in a place I knew well, and was plucked from the slush pile because the feisty feminist heroine made my editor laugh. Emotion touched with humor has been the hallmark of my books ever since.
I now have nearly sixty books in print, three of which have won awards. The Best Man & the Bridesmaid won a Romance Writers' of America, RITA, for Best Traditional Romance, The Marraige Miracle won another for Best Contemporary Romance and A Family of His Own, also shortlisted for a RITA, won the Romance Prize award by the British Romantic Novelists' Association.
Now we live in the house that John built for us in Wales. The landscape is magical, with soft, misty hills, sudden rocky outcrops and crumbling castles. This is Carmarthenshire, the land of Merlin and, according to legend, half a mile from our home King Arthur and his knights are sleeping in a cave, waiting for a bell to be rung to summon them to action. It's nice to know that help is so close at hand should we ever need it!
