Although I was born and raised near San Francisco, California, USA, I have lived in the North East of Britain near Hadrian's Wall since 1988 when I moved here after I married .
Why do I write?
Books and reading have been my passion for as long as I can remember. Before I could read, my mother reports my favorite occupation was to sit and look at books. After I learnt to read, in part using the Richard Scary books with his labeled pictures and wonderful anthropomorphic drawings of animals performing all sorts of tasks, I read everything including cereal packets.
My childhood favorites included The Wizard of Oz books, the Nancy Drew mystery series, The Chronicles of Narnia, Lloyd Alexander’s Book of Three series and countless books of folk tales and fairy stories. As I grew older, I read as widely as possible. If I read a mention of a book in another book, I tried to read that book.
By the time I was 12, I knew I wanted to be an author smd create stories to enthrall other people. But that longing to took a backseat to living fora while.
Years passed and while I wrote articles for newsletters, kept a journal, made several starts at writing novels, I was not serious. There was always something happening, including having 3 children!
In 2002 I became seriously ill with gall stones. As I lay in Hexham Hospital, I started to re-evaluate my life. What did I want to do with it? I decided I had lived enough to begin seriously writing, and made a promise to myself, I would write a novel (and finish it!)
I started one, but then stopped. How could I say anything of importance? Afterall I had been a stay at home mother for twelve years.
Later that summer I visited the website of Slyvia Engdahl, the author of the Newberry Award winning Enchantress from the Stars. I asked her why she no longer wrote. Her reply was that while she could think up themes, she could no longer think up the tent poles to hang them on. A light bulb moment for me. I thought I can think up tent poles. I became more determined than ever to finish a manuscript.
Within a week of sending that first manuscript off, the form Rejection letter landed in my post box. But I didn't give up. The writing bug had well and truly hit. I wrote several more manuscripts.
Ironically, my first sale was arevamped version of the first manuscript t0 DC Thomson for their My Story imprint.
In 2005, Linda Fildew from Harlequin Mills and Boon phoned to say they wanted to buy my manuscript The Gladiator's Honour. Since then I have written 23 other books for Harlequin and have been published in many countries including the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, the Czech Republic, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Spain Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.
What else do I do?
Other than writing and reading, my interests include gardening (the restoration of the garden is 25 year project -- started in 1996), beekeeping, cooking, needlework, walking and traveling.