I am the thirty-something mother of two, and I have been happily married for near on eighteen years to my first love who does have his fair share of "froggy' traits--but hey, I still consider him my prince, or at the very least, my knight in tarnish armor. I live in a medium-sized-Midwestern bible-belt town--just large enough not to be a place were everybody knows everybody, and everybody's business. Which, by the way, does describes the little river town I grew up in.

I am a red-hair, green-eyed, McGuire Irish--with a natural temper to match, so I am told--personally, I don't see it. :-) I still have family that lives in Ireland and England and I am told by Gram McGuire--with more than her share of that fighting Irish pride-- that our ancestral line dates back to Irish kings and that there is even a earldom and a crumbling castle somewhere bouts in Ireland today. ;-) And I get a bit of backwards . . . er, back hills--old world folklore from my father's side of the family. Now I won't bore you with all the details save to tell you that my great-grandma 'T' (for Totsie) was kept quite busy during prohibition eluding the 'Revenue man' while she distilled and parceled out her personal brand of mason jar moonshine (yes, I have the recipe) and that I consider myself a byproduct of my parents two worlds colliding.

I have traveled a bit, and lived overseas for a couple of years in third world countries with beware of the water signs posted---water that wasn't doctored with a healthy dose of bleach, that is. While overseas, I did manage to keep myself in romance reads with care packages and by trading books in the local villages (the love for romance reads is universal and the English versions having found their way into the open air markets by way of the nearest American military post.). My experiences overseas expanded this small town girl's mind.

I have a degree in psychology, and up until few years ago, I worked part time for a community health clinic working with trouble teens. I resigned to the volunteer board to become a stay at home-mom and to take up the reins of my husband's family estate-- a twenty-five room monstrosity. My children will be the fourth generation to have been reared in the Manor.

I do have some journalism in my background--pursued it through high school and college , but well, I thought I'd need a paycheck. I can say this, I wrote my first novel when I was eleven years old. One of those tell-all-woe-is-me pre-adolescent novels, fortunately for my parents, I didn't pursue publishing it. And I do believe it was about this time that I discovered romance novels, a love I inherited from my mother and one I hope to pass down to my own daughter one day. I'd blushed at the number, if I dared to keep an accounting, that I have read over the years.

I have always written in some form or another, but I really didn't start to actively pursue a writing career seriously--until about four years ago. Three years prior to that, I had lost my forty-two-year-old best-friend and mentor, my mother, to breast cancer. Tied into the traditional role of wife & mother--and still naive enough to believe time was an endless commodity, I had before been content to await the sweets of life to come to me. But my mother's death at a relatively young age had a profound effect on me. And I credit writing, or my desire to write, as the lifeline that pulled me from merely existing back into the land of the living.

I am a history buff. Anglophile is my favorite: Medieval, Georgian, Regency and Victorian. Love it, dream it, read it and write it. I am a particular fan of periods of strife--Revolutionary, Napoleanic and Civil War periods and I completely agree with Thomas Harding's , "My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but peace is poor reading." But I'll go one deeper, in that society as a whole has since the beginning of time conditioned itself to a strict order of conduct. And simply put, War brings out the worst in men--the beast as it were-- and there's nothing I like better than a woman who can tame a beast. And I also speak of War in a metaphoric sense-- without the blood, guts and gore. The private battles between men and woman in the boy-girl games they play in bed or otherwise. Conflict!

From a personal aside, I ascribe to the notion of never taking life too serious, since nobody gets out alive any way-- so I do have a bit of imp in me who likes to turn down the tension with the element of humor in my own writing and consequently love reads of this nature. I also have a particular love of the sea and ships--go figure. If you aspire to a belief in past lives, I have rather an unflattering notion that I was once an ample bosom wench who worked the wharf. :-)

I am published in poetry and both non-fiction and fiction article-length---hey, a few I've actually even been paid for! :-) And I write a monthly research column for my local Romance Writers of America chapter's newsletter--and have contributed the likes to other RWA chapters.

I have too many 'favorite' authors to really list, and as a rule, the backcover barb of a book-- what's between the covers-- is what sells it to me. Although, I did grieve the loss of Barbara Cartland-- considered draping my collection of her books in black--but my husband thought that was taking it a bit far. And one of the benefits of being involved in Romance Writers' of America is the opportunities I've had to meet and speak with some of my favorite Romance authors, like Kat Martin, Eileen Wilks, Leanne Banks, Mary Jo Putney. Nora Roberts, Cathie Linz, Linda Howard, Kate Walker, Susan Fox, Patricia McLinn, Debbie Mccomber, Holly Jacobs, Heather Gram, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Peggy Moreland, Cheryl St. John and Judith Arnold--just to name a few. And while historical romances are this reader's first love, I have another affair of the heart with contemporary romance reads and have a taste for anything with a paranormal element, enjoy time travels and science fiction, and love a good mystery and historical biographies.

Kolette J. Wilson