I hear voices. But more than that, I see faces and stories that unfold in my mind in full vivid color and sound. I thought it was just my burden (yes, burden) until I put pencil to paper. (Yes, pencil and paper. This was a bazillion years ago before computers came into my world.)

I have poor vision and have worn glasses since age three. This somewhat limited my ability to take part in sports or whatever outside. I have limited depth perception, which means I walked into my share of walls. The sun was too bright and would zero in through my lenses, blinding me. Plus, I didn’t like getting sweaty. So I would read. And did I read!

I consumed books like chocolate, never getting enough. I would spend babysitting dollars at yard sales and walk away with WAGON LOADS of books. I didn’t care what they were; they were food for the soul. Sci-fi, mystery, police drama, romance, you name it, if it had a cover, I read it. Getting to the library in my rural town was hard during the summer but those five and ten cent books kept me fed. I read books I would cringe to let my pre-teen read now.

A friend in elementary school wrote a story and I liked it. I realized then she, like me, had a world in her head no one else knew about. So I wrote a tale. And another. And another And have never stopped. My stories grew as I did from young adult (before there was a specific genre called that) to romance.

Why romance? It was the theme that ties everything I read together. Star Trek to Murder in a Small Town to Scruples, everywhere I looked was love. So that is where I found my home; in love, in romance and all the flavors it had to offer.