To find characters to illustrate my first family saga, I cut out models from the Sears catalogue. I was in fourth grade, but it was a start. In seventh grade I wrote a melodrama about two orphan sisters, one of whom was pregnant. There was also a story about a runaway girl with the unlikely name of Strawberry and one about mistaken identities and an evil blind date. My supportive, but vaguely concerned parents, sighed with relief when I announced I was going to write children's books. They bought me an electric typewriter and crossed their fingers, but somehow PASSION'S BRIDE came out. No one was really surprised. I graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a major in biology and a minor in chemistry and some notion that I would do marine research. Years of competitive swimming didn't help me anticipate seasickness. A career change seemed in order. I began working with adolescents and families, first as a childcare worker and later, after graduating from West Virginia University with a master's degree in counseling, as a therapist. I am currently the executive director of a child caring/mental health agency and find my work and my writing often compliment each other. One grounds me in reality and the other offers a break from it.

Brenda Joyce is the bestselling author of forty-one novels and five novellas. She has won many awards, and her debut novel, Innocent Fire, won a Best Western Romance award. She has also won the highly coveted Best Historical Romance award for Splendor and Two Lifetime Achievement Awards from Romantic Times BOOKreviews. There are over 14 million copies of her novels in print and she is published in over a dozen foreign countries. A native New Yorker, she now lives in southern Arizona with her son, dogs, and her Arabian and half-Arabian reining horses. Brenda divides her time between her twin passions—writing powerful love stories and competing with her horses at regional and national levels. For more information about Brenda and her upcoming novels, please visit her Web sites: www.brendajoyce.com, www.thedewarennedynasty.com and http://mastersoftimebooks.com.

Virginia Syddall was born on December 5, 1935 in England, where her father, Thomas Syddall, taught her to love history. She obtained a degree in History in the University. In 1956, Virginia married Arthur Henley. They moved to America, and now they live most of the year in St. Petersburg, Florida, and they spend the hot summers in Ontario, Canada, where they have their two adult children and three grandsons. Virginia Henley is a New York Times bestselling writer of historical novels. Her work has been translated into fourteen languages. She is the recipient of more than a dozen writing awards, including a Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award, a Waldenbooks' Bestselling Award, and a Maggie Award for Excellence from the Georgia Romance Writers.

Fern Michaels isn’t a person. I’m not sure she’s an entity either since an entity is something with separate existence. Fern Michaels® is what I DO. Me, Mary Ruth Kuczkir. Growing up in Hastings, Pennsylvania, I was called Ruth. I became Mary when I entered the business world where first names were the order of the day. To this day, family and friends call me Dink, a name my father gave me when I was born because according to him I was ‘a dinky little thing’ weighing in at four and a half pounds. However, I answer to Fern since people are more comfortable with a name they can pronounce. As they say, the past is prologue. I grew up, got a job, got married, had five kids. When my youngest went off to Kindergarten, my husband told me to get off my ass and get a job. Those were his exact words. I didn’t know how to do anything except be a wife and mother. I was also a voracious reader having cut my teeth on The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Cherry Ames and the like. The library was a magical place for me. It still is to this day. Rather than face the outside world with no skills, I decided to write a book. For some reason that didn’t intimidate me. As my husband said at the time, stupid is as stupid does. Guess what, I don’t have that husband any more. Guess what else! I wrote 99 books, most of them New York Times Best Sellers. Moving right along here . . . Several years ago I left Ballantine Books, parted company with my agent, sold my house in New Jersey that I had lived in all my married life and in 1993 moved to South Carolina. I figured if I was going to go through trauma let it be all at one time. It was a breeze. The kids were all on their own at that point. The dump was a 300 year old plantation house that is listed in the National Registry that I remodeled. Today it is beyond belief as are the gardens and the equally old Angel Oaks that drip Spanish moss. Unfortunately, I could not get my ghost to relocate. This ghost has been documented by previous owners. Mary Margaret as we call her, is “a friendly”. She is also mischievous. It took me two weeks to figure out that she didn’t like my coffee cups. They would slide off the table or counter or else they’d break in the dishwasher. I bought red checkered ones. All are intact as of this writing. She moves pillows from one room to the other and she stops all the clocks in the house at 9:10 in the a.m. at least once a week. When the Azaleas are in bloom, and only then, I find blooms on my night stand. I have this glorious front porch and during the warm months I see my swing moving early in the morning when the air is still and again late in the day. She doesn’t spook the dogs. I always know when she’s around because the five of them line up and look like they’re at a tennis match. As of this writing we’re co-habiting nicely. Most writers love what they do and I’m no exception. I love it when I get a germ of an idea and get it down on paper. I love breathing life into my characters. I love writing about women who persevere and prevail because that’s what I had to do to get to this point in time. It’s another way of saying it doesn’t matter where you’ve been, what matters is where you’re going and how you get there. The day I finally prevailed was the day I was inducted into the New Jersey Literary Hall of Fame. For me it was an awesome day and there are no words to describe it. I’ve been telling stories and scribbling for 37 years. I hope I can continue for another 37 years. It wasn’t easy during some of those years. As I said, I had to persevere. My old Polish grandmother said something to me when I was little that I never forgot. She said when God is good to you, you have to give back. For a while I didn’t know how to do that. When I finally figured it out I set up The Fern Michaels® Foundation. READ FERN MICHAELS' FULL BIOGRAPHY HERE: http://www.fernmichaels.com/biography/