WHAT TOOK ME SO LONG?

Like a lot of Gen‑Xers, I spent decades doing what everyone else thought I should. Well mostly – I tried. By day, I worked a very real, very grown‑up insurance job. By night and on weekends, I lived in community and regional theater, chasing stories, characters, and the thrill of stepping into someone else’s skin.

WHY ROMANCE?

One of the questions I got multiple times when telling my friends about my books was, “Why romance?”  My first thought was, why not? But the questions niggled in the back of my head… and my answer? Let’s face it - the world is full of people with microphones sending all kinds of anger, hate, and bad vibes into the world. I believe that what you think about you bring about - I want to manifest more love in the world.

Why a sports setting? For me, it is a familiar setting; in addition to being surrounded by athletes in my family, I also played when I was younger. At five foot ten, basketball and volleyball were a given. I know firsthand how close you become to the people on your team for better or worse. Those relationships have to be honest; even the people most closed off emotionally are forced to connect at a deeper level, which translates into easily believable and relatable emotional arches for my male characters.

There is also a glamor, a mystique around top athletes. It’s one of the few ways in our culture that a person can go from barely scraping by to having all the options that come with having millions of dollars. This sort of whiplash could seriously mess with them and the perception people have of them. Great fodder for tropes around reputation and reality.

WHY CHOOSE INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING?

This one makes me laugh - because I’m not doing anything independaently except the writing, and even with that we hired an editor. My Husband Mark and I were looking into the ins and outs of traditional publishing, when Dreya, our soon-to-be daughter-in-law, read the book and offered her expertise. Before long we had this gorgeous website, a social media strategy, and it took off from there. Everyone in the family has a gift or skill that lends itself well to the process. From cover art to formatting, to reading the fine print. Creating our own brand just made sense.