But Alec soon discovered he could not do what he pleased with Joy Fiona MacQuarrie. Bubbling with laughter, filled with spirit, she turned stately Belmore Park upside down with merriment and strange occurrences. She might even have gotten Alec to laugh -- and to cherish her -- if it had not been for the truth she hid. Though he turned to fire when he tasted her petal-soft lips, he turned to ice when he discovered that this winsome lady was, in fact, a witch. A witch whose powers of white magic were not always perfectly under control....Too late, Joy knew she was desperately in love and that nothing could stop the course of their destiny -- the scandal threatening to destroy her and the passion that held them both spellbound in a forbidden, irresistible match of two enchanted hearts.
I am a native Californian, a baby boomer who grew up in a very idyllic place at a very idyllic time--on the coast of Southern California in the 60's, although I spent many childhood summers before that on my grandparents' farm in Texas.
So I'm a West Coast girl raised by Southern parents, who grew up in a place where you spent your free time playing volleyball on the beach and weekends dancing to local bands like Beach Boys, Dion, and the Righteous Brothers.
My husband and I met in high school, and I never knew I wanted to be a writer until I was in my thirties and back in college again. I had been an art major the first time around--it was the 60's--quit to make some kind of mark in the world, but I got married instead.
My love of history and reading and art all came together for me when I quit school again, after working toward my history degree and then becoming a mother--something we were told couldn't happen. (The child not the degree.) So with the miracle gift of my daughter, came a new career for me.
I knew then I wanted to write a book, had an idea and more importantly a vision of the kind of stories I wanted to tell. I told myself I could always go back to school.
Funny thing the way life works. Almost two years to the day I quit school, I sold my first book on 50 pages to Pocket Books, a division of Simon and Schuster. That was over eighteen years ago and many books later.
So the road I traveled to become an author had many twists and turns, joys and disappointments. Yet I'm doing something I really love. In so many ways I'm a very lucky woman.
