2008 Golden Heart Finalist! The Romance Writers of America's national conference is in San Francisco this year. Check it out!

Right now I don't have much of a website, but I wanted to post my exciting news: I'm a finalist for the Golden Heart Award, contemporary series category, with my romantic suspense thriller, The Midnight Effect. I have a vivid imagination. As a teenager I thought I was going to write a book, have Stephen King-like fame, and buy a big house for my family in San Francisco's upscale Woodside Hills. (Where today you can't find a fixer-upper for under 5 million.) Yeah... right. Reality has since settled in, but still, the writing bug has bitten. It's sunk its little teeth in deep. Everything I see mushrooms into a story in my head. But how can I help myself when I see things like a police car with a flat tire speeding down the shoulder of a freeway without its lights, driven by a guy in orange overalls? Or a woman in Victorian era clothing walking through a neighborhood orchard at dusk? For me, not writing stories is impossible. (Once senility hits, I'm going to be a hoot.)

I was doing research for a medieval romance when I came across a paragraph about King Henry II seizing a robber baron's castle. He captured the baron and betrothed the man's three year old daughter to his then five-year-old son. Blink went the lightbulb in my head, and A King's Ransom came to be.

I was flipping channels one day and happened across "Papillion" precisely at the opening scene when the prisoners were marched through the streets of Paris to the ship that would transport them to Devil's Island. The wife of Louis Dega (Dustin Hoffman) ran after him shouting "I'll always love you!" I thought to myself, With all their money, why didn't she just sail down there and steal him out? And from that thought came Once Upon a Midnight Sea.

One autumn I was driving home as a dramatic sunset painted vivid colors against riotous clouds. Building lights and headlights were just starting to twinkle, creating an eerie, almost melancholy feel against the emerging twilight. I had the sensation of mystery and uncertainty, and imagined this was how a woman on the run would feel on a strange highway in a strange city. Add a strange child she'd only just come into custody of, and The Midnight Effect came to life.

In June 1998 I joined Romance Writers of America and attended my first local meeting with the Sacramento Valley Rose chapter. At that very first meeting I picked up a flyer about "the hook" and was instantly called by my second novel, Emerald Fire, a twelfth-century medieval. I attended the Valley Rose's next meeting a month later; their famous "3 page read." I mustered my courage and sent in the first three pages of Emerald Fire to be read aloud to a round table of writer-critiquers. It was hard, but I did it, and I'm glad I did. Someone called it "a fairy tale." Someone else said, "Hmm, we sure learn a lot about the hero in the first chapter..." (one of the problems I still have today: tipping the hat too early) It was my first taste of Romance Writer Support. Both encouraging and critical feedback, I have come to realize, are crucial to a writer's career.

A few months later I entered the Golden Heart, my first contest ever. I don't know if it was a fluke, but I finaled in the Long Historical category with a second medieval (3rd completed manuscript) entitled A King's Ransom. (No, it probably wasn't FINISHED-finished, but at that time they only randomly selected from the finalists to send in finished manuscripts. Today, the rules state the finished manuscript goes in at entry time.)This first final was the greatest experience of my writing career, but it was only a taste of the amazing things to come. I flew to Chicago for the RWA National convention and attended the glamorous awards ceremony.

That year, I met friends I still keep in touch with today. Since then I've set about studying, practicing, and perfecting the craft of writing sensual, heartwarming stories of historical romantic adventure. It's been a long, hard ten years and I don't have much to claim in the way of accomplishment. But I enjoy writing so much, quitting isn't an option. The stories, the characters and the plot twists will always be in my head.

And always with a happy ending.