By the time she reached her late teens she already loved creative writing and was telling all her friends that one day she would be a writer for Harlequin. She even took a ""year out"" at 18 to write, the old fashioned way, with reams of paper and a good fountain pen.

But after one unsuccessful attempt at a local television competition to find a new writer for Harlequin to look at, and with the realization that maybe she should live a little before she tried writing about people falling in love, Trish soon went out into the world and tried a career or two.

With her life more settled Trish finally sat down in front of a computer and started to work on one of the stories she'd first started writing when she'd taken her ""year out."" Then she made the first steps toward actually submitting it. Trish discovered the eHarlequin.com boards and learnt everything she needed to know about partials, synopses and how to submit. She picked up writing tips and got to talk to authors who had been in the business for years.

Having talked to fellow wannabes on the site she knew the chances of selling on a first submission were slim. But by Christmas Eve she had a request for the full manuscript (she still maintains Santa brought it) and after three sets of revisions she got the call. ""I got a message on my mobile from the editor at Harlequin who was dealing with my manuscript and I can remember thinking how nice it was that they would ring to tell you they weren't taking it."" Believing that they were ringing to say they were taking it was just too much optimism for Trish to handle.

""She asked if I was sitting down and then told me they wanted to buy the book. I screamed so hard she must have been deaf in that ear for weeks. And even before I got off the phone I was in tears. I had just wanted it for so long.""

The rest, as they say, is history. That first submission, The Bridal Bet, was released in the UK in April of 2003 and now Trish is living the dream she had as an 18-year-old. She is an author for Harlequin.