I always knew I liked to write, but the road to creating my first book was long and winding and full of potholes.
I spent the better part of my college years in the basement of the Vanderbilt Student Center, where I helped write and edit the campus paper. It was called The Hustler, and if you ever want to raise a few eyebrows, just try showing up for a job interview with that at the top of your resume. Aside from the name, The Hustler was great. And I loved the caffeine-fueled buzz of the newsroom so much, I graduated from college determined to be a reporter.
For the first few years, I lived all over the place doing what I call extreme reporting--either slogging through snow and ice to cover riveting school board meetings in the Chicago suburbs, or braving scorching tropical heat to interview American expats living in the Philippines. I wrote news, features, and even a few travel logs. As much as I loved living in various parts of the world and being a journalist, some of the assignments were real yawners and I never once met a fellow reporter who looked remotely like Anderson Cooper. Oh well. Journalism gave me an excuse to subscribe to all the news magazines I could ever hope to read, and I learned lots of arcane grammar rules that I work hard to keep to myself so people won’t avoid me at parties.
When I finally got the travel bug out of my system, I returned to my native Texas and decided to try my hand at writing fiction. Strangely enough, all my stories seem to take place near the Texas Gulf Coast, a colorful region where I spent much of my childhood.
These days I make my home in Austin, where the sun shines about three hundred fifty days a year and the favorite local slogan is “keep Austin weird”. When I’m not busy enjoying the lakes and hills near my house, I’m pounding away on my laptop or whipping up gourmet mac-n-cheese dinners for my two young kids.
Writing is my passion, and I feel incredibly lucky to get to go to work everyday in my jeans and bare feet. I hope you’ll check out my next release, another romantic suspense novel by Pocket Books, and please keep stopping by the website for sneak previews and upcoming events!
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