Rebecca Hagan Lee has had many different jobs, earning her beads of experience on the necklace of life with each one, but her desire to write was constant. After graduating from college, she set out to make her mark in the world of television journalism, but somewhere along the way, she decided she was a small town girl at heart and settled in a town where the media consisted of a weekly newspaper and an AM radio station. Seeking a creative outlet, she turned to writing romance and began to write stories far different from those in the world of television news, but not that far removed from the hundreds of episodes of Daniel Boone, Big Valley, Gunsmoke and Bonanza she had watched growing up. She decided to create stories where good guys win, bad guys lose, prostitutes have hearts of gold and the heroes and heroines who fall in love and persevere are richly rewarded with incredibly bright futures and happy endings. In her world, heroines don't die or get killed off to make way for the next episode's new love interest. Her heroines get their men and help them become ideal husbands, lovers, friends and fathers. Rebecca lives in a small southern town with her husband, a miniature schnauzer, two rat terriers, a half dozen barn cats, and two extraordinary horses. She is currently seated at the computer working hard to make her dreams come true, or riding off with her hero into the sunset. . .

New York Times bestselling author Eloisa James writes historical romances for HarperCollins Publishers. Her novels have been published to great acclaim. A reviewer from USA Today wrote of Eloisa's very first book that she "found herself devouring the book like a dieter with a Hershey bar"; later People Magazine raved that "romance writing does not get much better than this." Her novels have repeatedly received starred reviews from Publishers' Weekly and Library Journal and regularly appear on the best-seller lists. After graduating from Harvard University, Eloisa got an M.Phil. from Oxford University, a Ph.D. from Yale and eventually became a Shakespeare professor, publishing an academic book with Oxford University Press. Currently she is an associate professor and head of the Creative Writing program at Fordham University in New York City. Her "double life" is a source of fascination to the media and her readers. In her professorial guise, she's written a New York Times op-ed defending romance, as well as articles published everywhere from women's magazines such as More to writers' journals such as the Romance Writers' Report. Eloisa...on her double life: When I'm not writing novels, I'm a Shakespeare professor. It's rather like having two lives. The other day I bought a delicious pink suit to tape a television segment on romance; I'll never wear that suit to teach in, nor even to give a paper at the Shakespeare Association of America conference. It's like being Superman, with power suits for both lives. Yet the literature professor in me certainly plays into my romances. The Taming of the Duke (April 2006) has obvious Shakespearean resonances, as do many of my novels. I often weave early modern poetry into my work; the same novel might contain bits of Catullus, Shakespeare and anonymous bawdy ballads from the 16th century. When I rip off my power suit, whether it's academic or romantic, underneath is the rather tired, chocolate-stained sweatshirt of a mom. Just as I use Shakespeare in my romances, I almost always employ my experiences as a mother. When I wrote about a miscarriage in Midnight Pleasures, I used my own fears of premature birth; when the little girl in Fool For Love threw up and threw up, I described my own daughter, who had that unsavory habit for well over her first year of life. So I'm a writer, a professor, a mother - and a wife. My husband Alessandro is Italian, born in Florence. We spend the lazy summer months with his mother and sister in Italy. It always strikes me as a huge irony that as a romance writer I find myself married to a knight, a cavaliere, as you say in Italian. One more thing...I'm a friend. I have girlfriends who are writers and girlfriends who are Shakespeare professors. And I have girlfriends who are romance readers. In fact, we have something of a community going on my website. Please stop by and join the conversation on my readers' pages.