After a 23-year AF career, Colonel Merline Lovelace launched a second career as a writer, basing many of her tales on her own experiences in uniform and on her travels all around the globe. The USA Today best-selling author now has more than 11 million copies of her books in print. Her works have won numerous awards, including the Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA. Merline is especially proud to have been named the University of Oklahoma's Writer of the Year and the Oklahoma Female Veteran of the Year.

Elizabeth Bevarly was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky and earned her BA with honors in English from the University of Louisville in 1983. Although she can’t recall ever wanting to be anything but a novelist-oh, all right, she toyed briefly with becoming an archaeologist, until she realized how awful she looked in khaki and flannel, and there was a brief fling with the interior decorator thing, until she realized she had trouble distinguishing chintz from moiré, and… (Where was I? Oh, yeah. My brilliant career.) Anyway, her career side trips before making the leap to writing included stints working as a bartender, a waitress, a movie theater cashier, a soap-hawker for Crabtree & Evelyn, an apparel-hawker for The Limited, and a bridal registry consultant for a major department store. She also did time as an editorial assistant for a medical journal, where she learned the correct spellings and meanings of a variety of words (like microscopy and histological) which, with any luck at all, she will never use again in this life. She wrote her first novel when she was twelve years old. It was 32 pages long-and that was with college rule notebook paper-and featured three girls named Liz, Marianne and Cheryl, who explored the mysteries of a haunted house. Her friends Marianne and Cheryl proclaimed it “Brilliant! Spellbinding! Kept me up past dinnertime reading!” Those rave reviews only kindled the fire inside her to write more. Since sixth grade, Elizabeth has gone on to complete more than 60 works of contemporary romance. Her novels regularly appear on the USA Today and Waldenbooks bestseller lists, and The Thing About Men was a New York Times Extended List bestseller. She’s been nominated for the prestigious RITA Award, has won the coveted National Readers’ Choice Award, and Romantic Times magazine has seen fit to honor her with two-count ‘em TWO-Career Achievement Awards. Her books have been translated into two dozen languages and published in three dozen countries, and there are more than ten million copies in print worldwide. She has claimed as residences Washington, DC, northern Virginia, southern New Jersey and Puerto Rico, but she now resides back in her native Kentucky with her husband and son and two very troubled cats where she fully intends to remain.

And they lived happily ever after. I’ve always loved that sentence. There is such hope in those words, such faith in the future and ever-after love. I’ve always been a believer, which led me to being a reader of romance novels long before I began to write them. The dance of courtship between a man and a woman, sometimes slow and bluesy, sometimes wild and uninhibited, is sheer bliss to me. And the best part about writing is creating these two dancers who find their perfect partners out of all the other people on the planet. What brings them together? What could tear them apart? Why do they stick it out through the bad times? Why do they fall more in love with each other every day? Finding the answers to these questions intrigues me. Who are you? I ask them. Some characters give me an hour-long monologue; others clam up until I push the right buttons. Eventually, I get them all to talk, even if I have to torture them a little. On my journey to becoming a writer, I did a lot of the usual things—married, had children, attended college a little later than the average coed and earned a B.A. in English. Some not-so-usual things happened, too. Life constantly changes, and so we must grow. It’s not a bad thing. I’ve been fortunate enough to win some awards and receive some honors, which are listed elsewhere on this site. I’ve had the great privilege of working with an exceptional editor from my first book on. My community of writers spans the entire country—smart, funny and loyal people who share and give and support. Without them, this once-upon-a-time journey wouldn’t be anywhere near as fun.

Winner of over 15 national awards, including the RWA Hall of Fame and the RWA Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award, Jennifer Greene weaves real issues, warm characters common-life humor, and page-turning romance and suspense into her stories. Jennifer sold her first book in 1980, and since then has sold over 85 books in the contemporary romance genre. She won her first professional writing award from RWA, a “Silver Medallion” in 1984, followed by over 20 nominations and awards—including achieving RWA’s HALL OF FAME status, and the most coveted Nora Roberts LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD. Jennifer has regularly been on a variety of bestseller lists, and has written for Harlequin, Avon, Berkley and Dell. Her books have sold all over the world in over 20 languages. She also accumulated a number of pseudonyms—most recognizably JENNIFER GREENE, but also JEANNE GRANT and JESSICA MASSEY. She was born in Michigan, started writing stories in 7th grade, and graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in English and Psychology. The University honored her with their “Lantern Night Award”, a tradition developed to honor fifty outstanding women graduates each year. Exploring issues and concerns for women today is what first motivated her to write, and she has long been an enthusiastic and active supporter of women’s fiction, which she believes is an unbeatable way to reach out and support other women. Jennifer lives in Michigan, just a short distance from Lake Michigan, with her husband Lar. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. (1)romance aka Jeanne Grant

Barbara Schroeder was born on 28 October 1946 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, USA. She worked as nurse, before she married William P. Boswell, a attorney, and they had three daughters. She has been a longtime romance novel fan, becoming hooked on the romances by Harlequin back in the mid-‘70s when she was home with her three small daughters. When the youngest reached school age in 1983, she wanted something to do with her extra time. She thought about going back to nursing, but didn't care to deal with hospital shifts. She'd often made up stories in her head and/or continued the stories that she'd read, so it seemed like a fun idea to try to write a story of her own. It took a lot more effort and organization than the loosely strung-together scenes she'd run through her mind, but she was right about the fun part! She enjoyed the whole process and wrote a story that she knew she would enjoy reading. She sent it off and was thrilled when it was accepted! It was even more exciting to see her name on the book cover. Some 50-plus books later, it's still a thrill to see her name on the book and it's still fun to make up stories—at least most of the time! Barbara gets her ideas from everywhere but especially from reading, which she loves to do. Sometimes, just a sentence in a newspaper or a magazine will spark an idea to develop into a romance. Other times, she'll be inspired by another romance novel and she will try to put her own spin on a favorite old plot. Barbara believes that we all have our preferences—she's always been partial to the "secret baby" story line. That, plus the "marriage of convenience" and class or family conflicts are some of her particular favorites. Her three daughters are all grown up now, and she and her husband are the proud grandparents of a beautiful little grandson. They also have three cats who seem to think that they are the rulers of their house. They are terribly spoiled, and they just might be right.