In my pre-writer life, I was a folk singer, a nun, a college teacher, a semi-professional bridge player, and a travel manager. I enjoyed each of those careers. But it wasn’t until my wonderful mother’s long illness, when I had to close my travel agency and care for her, that a whole new world opened for me. Knowing I was quietly shriveling into a mental prune, a friend e-mailed a suggestion. “Why don’t you write a romance novel?” I didn’t read romance novels, so I figured, “How hard can that be?” During the three years of my apprenticeship, as I labored over an endless, overwritten mishmash, I found out! Although I maintained a profound devotion to my Opus Magnus, I eventually had to face the truth. To use the relevant academic term, it sucked. But in my struggles to wrestle that sucker into submission, I had learned my craft. I wrote a new book and sent it over the transom to a New York publisher. Eleven days later they bought it, and A Spirited Affair became a RITA finalist for Best Regency Romance and Best First Book. I was a professional writer! Since then I have written for Random House, HarperCollins, and Penguin, picking up many awards and honors along the way. So far my stories are set in Regency England, a period I continue to love. Half are traditional Regencies, and others are longer historicals, chock-full of mystery, adventure, and challenge. All these books will be reissued by Bell Bridge Books, starting in July 2012 with the “Big Cat” trilogy, and I’ll be writing new books for them as well. Now and again I join forces with my friend Alicia Rasley. Our Drewe Sisters stories, along with RITA winner Gwen’s Ghost, are available from Amazon Kindle. When not chained to the computer, I live happily near the glorious beach in Coronado, California with Lymond, Monsieur le Comte de Sevigny, an erudite feline who occasionally blogs for me at www.StoryBroads.com.