The area had previously spawned such literary greats as William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and, from Lyn's own hometown, Elizabeth Spencer. With such a heritage of local talent, it was probably inevitable that Lyn chose to study English and American literature at the Mississippi University for Women, later going on to share her passion with others through teaching.

During that time, she also married a handsome and worthy hero and reared two normal, noisy children. She completed more education — a Master's in school administration—and taught herself all sorts of homemaking skills, from gardening to quilting to making homemade jams and jellies. But she never quite forgot her first and most secret dream — to craft romance novels that would combine strong emotional conflicts with interesting historical settings.

In 2001, faced with the pending graduation of her eldest child from high school and feeling the first stirrings of the coming "empty-nest," she decided the time had come to make her dream come true.

By 2006, she'd completed four novels, made a host of new friends, won numerous awards on the RWA contest circuit and gotten "the call" from the Harlequin Mills and Boon office.

"Writing is lonely work," she says, "full of anxiety, and often frustrating. But I'd rather be doing that than anything else I know."

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