History of an Author

Dear Readers,

You could say I began my fiction career in the third grade when I told the class, during show and tell, that I used to have a little sister -- until a black widow spider came down from the garage roof and bit her to death. I won't say that I've been telling imaginative lies ever since, but . . .

In the fourth grade I started a book about a sweet, misunderstood little girl (me) who suffered cruel punishments inflicted by her mother, just because she forgot to do her chores. Her mother also refused to believe that the child's older, goody two-shoes sister broke the blue bird vase, not her. It was a story full of pathos and character. Unfortunately I grew bored and threw it away.

Fifth grade was when the school caught fire and I created a wonderfully heroic tale of how I was the one to give the alarm and save all the schoolchildren. That one landed me in the principal's office.

During high school my creative juices veered more to the artistic when I envisioned a fabulous career in fashion illustration. I gave up that dream when my father died and I had to go to work directly after high school graduation. Marriage followed. When the children I'd anticipated never materialized I began looking for ways to satisfy my need to create, and rediscovered art.

After two years of college as a fine arts major, I divorced and moved from the Los Angeles area to Utah where I planned to wow the world with my watercolor landscapes. (Painting landscapes in LA limits you to city skylines and seascapes. I wanted country and wildlife.)

The odd thing was that, once I was living in Utah, surrounded by all that wonderful scenery, I never once picked up a paint brush. It was my sister's fault. She introduced me to romance novels.

A few years later I awoke one morning from a particularly enchanting love scene in a waterfall that I knew had to be put into a book. So I dragged out the old typewriter from my college days and began that very day to write my first novel.

Are there any spiders in it?

Actually, I can't remember. It's been too long since I read it.

Several years went by, during which I learned the craft of writing, before my first break came, and my story, Tender Touch became a Golden Heart finalist. Do I have a humorous Golden Heart experience to relate? Yeah, but I'll leave that for another time.

Since then I've sold five western historical romances to Kensington Publishing. One of those stories, Forever Mine, a mail order bride story placed at an Oregon lighthouse, was nominated for a Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award, and was a finalist in the Affaire de Coeur Reader/Writer Poll. My fourth book, To Have And To Hold,was also a finalist in the Reader/Writer Poll.

To learn more about my historical novels, check out my backlist. My fifth novel, Scent of Roses, will be coming out under the pseudonym of Rachel Summers, and is scheduled for release in September 1999.

My favorite heros are the dark, brooding type, hard and crusty outside, soft as melted butter inside, like good French bread. Add a fine wine in the form of a strong, gutsy heroine, the poetry of well written prose, and you have a heck of a good story. That's what I try to create. Whether or not I've succeeded, I'll leave to my readers to decide.

Be sure to enter your name in my guestbook, which will make you eligible for the next drawing for a free, autographed book.

You'll have to excuse me now. I just heard a husky whisper from one of the dusty, shadowed corners of my office. Someone's lurking there, someone long, lanky and lascivious, beckoning to me. I have no intention of playing coy.