If you’d told me back when I was juggling bedside patient care and dealing with doctors’ extremely diverse personalities that one day I would be an author with over 1.3 million books sold, someone would’ve had to pop some smelling salts!

I’d been a Registered Nurse for twenty-five years when a surge of creativity kicked in. Though looking back, I realize the signs of being a writer have always been there.  Observer of people. Constantly thinking “what if?”  Waking up with ideas in the middle of the night. Daydreaming about other people’s dramatic love stories and how to wrangle a happily-ever-after out of their darkest moments.       

Acknowledging my newfound desires led to a wonderful journey through UCLA and Cal State Northridge extension courses, writers’ workshops, joining writer organizations, attending writer conferences, critique groups, and several completed manuscripts. Five years later, with intentional targeting, after a second try at using my medical background to write a short romance, I became the fourth U.S. author to sell across the pond to The Mills & Boon Medical Romance line for Harlequin in London. Like that, I crossed from novice to writer with a call I’ll never forget.  “We want to buy your book!”  Nineteen books later, several are still available in nearly a dozen languages throughout Europe and around the world. Six years after that first sale, with the help of an agent I sold to the New York side of Harlequin in the Special Edition line and wrote a dozen more books for them. Thirty-one in all for Harlequin, Mills & Boon.