I was born on a stormy, fog-ridden night in Tulsa, Oklahoma. When I was three, my family moved to southern California. My daddy was an aerospace engineer and was the supervisor on a couple of the Apollos, which got my imagination going at an early age. I’m married and have a daughter and a son.

Now I live the winter months near Dallas, Texas and then I fly east with the birds to spend spring and summer and part of the fall in Surf City, North Carolina, which is where my husband and I plan to retire within the next five years. Since my husband works a rotating twelve-hour shifts and he’s built up lots of vacation time, he is able to spend nice hunks of time with me in Surf City throughout the spring and summer months. My daughter, son-in-law and baby granddaughter live in Surf City so I get to see lots of them, which is a blessing!

Ever since I was small, I made up stories for my troll dolls, my rubber mermaids and for my Barbie dolls–most of the time they were all together in the same world. When my daddy worked for McDonnell Douglas and was involved in some of the Apollo launches was when my imagination really took off. We had a dumb waiter and I would imagine traveling to all sorts of planets inside that shoot.

But when I went to college, advisers and my family discouraged me from majoring in journalism or creative writing because it would be difficult to make money that way. So, I ended up earning two Bachelors of Science degrees (one in education; the other in accounting) and a Masters of Science degree in instructional technology. But my true calling is writing fiction, especially historical romances.

When I got laid off from my internal auditing job at McDonnell Douglas is when I decided to jump into my life-long desire to write. (In fact, my good college friend reminded me that during our tipsy reveries on the strip at Oklahoma State University that  I repeatedly whispered my desire to write stories).

My first book was a 200,000 monstrosity that kept birthing new subplots and with so many broken threads that I had to throw it out. That was when I enrolled in Deborah Camp’s creative writing class (an author who had 50 books published by Harlequin and Avon Books) at Tulsa Community College and joined Romance Writers of America (RWA). I then was invited to a weekly critique group called the Vicious Circle, which was hands-on, hard-core learning and feedback.

While teaching in an at-risk middle school in Tulsa, I continued to write. My first published book–a 100,000 word sexy Regency–was published in 2001 by Hard Shell Word Factory, a small print-on-demand publishing house. Three years later I was offered a publishing contract by Dorchester Love Spell, and then published two more books after that. A couple of years later Dorchester Publishing went out of business. I submitted proposals to several of the big New York publishers. Several nibbles, but no contracts. When I saw how self-publishing had taken off, I started studying and reading how-to books.

At the RWA conference in San Diego Debra Holland invited me to write in her Montana Skies Kindle World, which got me going in the indie publishing arena. Now I am self-publishing and absolutely loving the control of the publishing process.

I write character-driven Romances, whether they are set in the Historical West, Scottish Historicals, Regencies … or Contemporary. The Phasing Society has pixies, shapeshifters, and trolls in the first trilogy. In the second and third trilogies there will be witches, warlocks, dark faeries and light faeries. I love~

• A hero who takes charge, who seduces.
• A heroine who has spunk to stand up to him. She can be shy and innocent, feisty, daring, kick-ass, no-nonsense… or anywhere in between.
• Suspense or mystery with humor and adventure sprinkled in that will keep you turning the pages.
• Intriguing inner emotional conflicts that’ll wrench your heart.

I adore traveling both in America and all over the World, meeting people, immersing myself into all kinds of cultures, visiting cemeteries, old buildings, bridges and exploring the countryside or city on my bicycle.