I just realized something this weekend–I have been writing now for ten years. Ten Years!!! How is that even possible? The time has just flown by, and it’s hard now to remember which story came in which year, but my first came out in 2001.

I wrote Her Kind of Man (which had a different working title then, but now I can’t remember what it was!) when I was in college. It was mostly an escape from writing term papers, and a challenge to myself to see if I could actually write a whole book. I had been reading romances since I was ten years old (getting started with Barbara Cartlands, a few Heyers, the old Sunfire YA historicals, stuff like that), so naturally I thought of writing a romance. This story was my first (and only!) Western, and I had no expectations of it beyond something fun to try. But then I happened to go to an RT convention with another romance-reading friend (with no idea of what to expect there, since I did not read the magazine at the time!), sat in on a workshop about how to submit manuscripts, met some editors, and decided to give it a try. It was bought by Kensington’s now-defunct Precious Gems line…

And now I can’t believe it has been that long. I’ve never looked at the story again–I am too scared, since it was my “learning book” (plus I never re-read my stuff when it’s an actual book and can’t be changed–too frustrating!), but if you’re curious it is no available as an ebook from Belgrave House.

What was the first book you ever wrote, or the first romance you ever read? (I’m pretty sure my “first” was Cartland’s Elizabethan Lover, where the heroine disguises herself as a boy and stows away on the hero’s ship as he sails off the New World. It was quickly followed by a Viking romance whose title has been lost to the mists of time…))