A CPA who writes romance novels? Well, I’m a Gemini, I like to use both halves of my brain.

I never planned to become a writer. I had my first poems printed at the ripe age of seven—in a mimeographed-and-stapled literary anthology of my second grade class. But my poetry career was sidelined as, in the years following, there was no time for writing anything except papers and essays compelled by teachers and professors. And then there were the day jobs: teacher, employment counselor, payroll accountant for Southwest Airlines. And my most important job: mother to two now-grown daughters and grandmother to a young teenager who thinks she’s more adult than any of us.

My late husband worked for an oil company with subsidiaries all over the world. So I’ve traveled to places many people would never even consider going, and lived in countries as diverse as Israel, the Netherlands, and Nigeria.

It was in Nigeria that I started writing my first novel. In longhand, on school tablets, the only available writing paper. But as most writers will tell you, when inspiration strikes, when suddenly characters and their problems fill your head, you have no choice; you must write it down. When I eventually typed my manuscript into a computer, it weighed in at 600 pages, single-spaced. That book has since found its rightful place as a doorstop.

But the writing bug had bitten. I wrote a sequel, September Spring, based on the same characters. And I’ve been writing ever since.

When not traveling, I’ve lived most of my life in Texas. I wasn’t born here, but I got here as fast as I could. Where else can you find beaches, plains, mountains, big skies, and a border with another country all in the same state?

When I retired, I expected writing to become my day job. But then I decided I didn’t want a day job. I was enjoying life with my second time around sweetheart—coffee and Sudoku in the mornings, wine on the patio at five o'clock. Also reading, traveling, family, and volunteer work. I taught English as a second language for ten years in the Dallas facility Literacy Achieves. I currently manage all the adult education programming at my synagogue. I belong to two book clubs, and am a member Romance Writers of America and enjoy critiquing and sharing with other writers.

But the main reason I don’t write full time is that for me, when it’s a job, all the magic goes out of it. Even though I only publish one or two books a year, they’re all labors of love, slowly rolled out in creative, right-brained expression, then edited and fretted over with left-brained compulsion until I feel they’re as real and as well-written as I can make them. I love the process.

I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing.