I grew up in Northport on the Columbia River, 120 miles north of Spokane where I spent my childhood riding horses and playing cowgirl on my grandparents nearby farm – which was so rustic that in the early days it even lacked electricity and running water.

As delightful as my childhood was, I longed to see the world. After graduating as valedictorian of my high school class, I left at the age of eighteen to pursue my wanderlust. Due to the success of my writing career I was able to live part-time in London for several years, spend time in Italy and travel to such far-off destinations as Russia, Hong Kong and Israel – and now I’ve come full circle, back to the people and the places I know and love in Northport.

I trace the birth of my desire to be an author to the day when a teacher told me that the stories I was writing were good and that I just might have a future in writing. When I eventually decided to write novels I endured my fair share of rejection, before I finally sold Fletcher’s Woman in 1983 to Pocket Books.

Since then I have written over one hundred titles in a variety of genres including historical, contemporary, paranormal and thriller before coming home, in a literal sense, and concentrating on novels with a Western flavour.

In 2007 I was honoured to be awarded the prestigious Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award by the Romance Writers of America, for my devotion to the craft of writing.