Like so many romance readers, my first romance novel was by
Kathleen Woodiwiss - The Flame and the Flower, to be exact. I
was thirteen. I spent the next month working my way through
her entire back list. Shortly thereafter I discovered
Judith McNaught, Johanna Lindsey, Karen Robards, Catherine
Coulter, Shirlee Busbee among others, and devoured their lavish
historical epics full of overbearing alpha males and the women
who brought them to their knees. I was hooked. My high school teachers
marveled at my ability to read romance novels under the desk
and still score straight A's. I started to
imagine myself, living in a cabin in the mountains somewhere,
writing romance novels.
It took me quite awhile to pursue
my dream. After graduating
from Stanford with a degree in English Literature, I worked
in a variety of soul sucking admin jobs before I began my career
in marketing. It wasn't exactly my dream job, but at
least my writing appeared on several web sites and in many
software marketing brochures. Unfortunately I wasn't
able to fit the phrase "and her loins melted like hot
wax" into any of them.
During my stint as the world's surliest
receptionist, I took my first stab at writing. The result
was a very melodramatic western historical which reads like
a bad Elizabeth Lowell rip off. Its currently languishing
on my hard drive, forever stuck on page 330.
Then in fall
2001 I had an incredible stroke of luck and got laid off from
my marketing job. I decided it was time
to stop saying I wanted to be a writer and to actually give
it a serious go. Fortunately my husband, a socially
well adjusted alpha male, is a very generous patron of the
arts.
Four years later, I sold my first book
and I'm pretty much living the dream of getting paid to write
romance. I
don't live in a cabin in the mountains, but I do live in a
rural-ish town near San Francisco (hey, we have deer and bunnies
in our yard, along with the occasional coyote) with my husband,
sons, and two dogs who patiently listen to my dialogue and
help me work out plot points. When I'm not writing sexy
romance, I enjoy running, reading, yoga and watching Food Network
and bad reality TV.
Like so many romance readers, my first romance novel was by
Kathleen Woodiwiss - The Flame and the Flower, to be exact. I
was thirteen. I spent the next month working my way through
her entire back list. Shortly thereafter I discovered
Judith McNaught, Johanna Lindsey, Karen Robards, Catherine
Coulter, Shirlee Busbee among others, and devoured their lavish
historical epics full of overbearing alpha males and the women
who brought them to their knees. I was hooked. My high school teachers
marveled at my ability to read romance novels under the desk
and still score straight A's. I started to
imagine myself, living in a cabin in the mountains somewhere,
writing romance novels. 