Heather W. MacAllister lives in Texas and is married to her high-school sweetheart. Following the instructions in How to Get a Teen-Age Boy, and What to Do with Him When You Get Him by Ellen Peck, one of her all-time favorite books, she expressed an interest in his hobby—ham radio. He challenged her—learn Morse code and get her license, and he’d take her to the senior prom. She did, and currently sports her call sign, WB5RMA, on her car license plate. Heather became addicted to romance novels in college, yet still managed to graduate and become a music teacher. And then her sons were born. Within seven months, nine baby-sitters quit, so she took pity on the childcare industry, quit teaching, and began avoiding housework by writing during her sons’ nap time. Before she was published, Heather won the Romance Writer's of America Golden Heart Award. She published as Heather Allison and as Heather MacAllister. Her published novels have been nominated for the RWA RITA award three times, and eHarlequin.com readers voted LONE STAR SANTA favorite Laugh-Out-Loud book of 2006. In addition to awards for best Harlequin Romance and best Harlequin Temptation, Romantic Times Book Reviews has twice nominated Heather for a Career Achievement Award in Series Love and Laughter. She has published over 40 books with Harlequin. Her award-winning romantic comedies have been translated into 25 languages and published in dozens of countries. When she's not writing, Heather spends her time collecting vintage jewelry, watching fireworks displays, and killing plants.

Bestselling, award winning author Barbara McMahon has written more than 80 novels which have sold more than 16 million copies world wide in more than fifty countries in twenty-eight languages. Known for her heartwarming, emotional stories, she excels in capturing those feelings when first falling in love. She has won or been nominated for every major award in the romance genre from a double nomination in the RITA to winning the Bookseller's Best, National Readers Choice Award and the prestigious HOLT Medallion, among others. Barbara lives in a rural county in California's gold rush country. She loves the history of the place and is involved in the county's genealogy group and historic cemetery preservation in addition to volunteering one day a week at the local Animal Shelter.

Rebecca Winters, an American writer and mother of four, lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. When she was 17, she went to boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she learned to speak French and met girls from all over the world. Upon returning to the U.S., Rebecca developed her love of languages when she earned her B.A. in secondary education, history, French, and Spanish from the University of Utah and did postgraduate work in Arabic. Because of her studies overseas, Rebecca decided to become a teacher and studied French and history at her alma mater in Utah. For the past 15 years, she's taught junior-high and high-school French and history, and says she got into serious writing almost by accident. "I went through a back door to begin my writing career," she says. "In the first place, I never liked to write anything—I only wrote mandatory papers for school. If anyone had told me I would become a writer, let alone love it, I would have laughed and dismissed the notion as absolutely absurd and preposterous. "Having said that, I did write letters to my parents while I was away at boarding school when I was 17. My mother kept them and one day, after I had become a mother for the second time, she sent me all my old letters and asked me to write my memories from them for posterity. At the time I thought she was insane, but because I adore my mother I did as she asked. "By the time I’d finished sorting through all those teenage thoughts, observations and opinions, the seeds of a story had begun to form in my mind. The seed eventually became a novel and was published in 1979. It was called The Loving Season, published under the name Rebecca Burton. Naturally, it takes place in Switzerland and France. "As soon as I finished that novel, I found myself wanting to start another novel entitled By Love Divided, a World War II romance. A few years later, Harlequin bought a novel, Blind to Love, a story that takes place in Kenya. It’s been a love affair ever since. "I guess the moral of the story is, never underestimate a mother’s intuition!" As Rebecca has kept writing, her talents have not gone unrecognized. She has won the National Readers' Choice Award, the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, and has been named Utah Writer of the Year. Right now, Rebecca is working her way toward her 50th novel for Harlequin.

After a haphazard career spent working and travelling around the world, I stumbled into romance writing as a way to fund a PhD. My first book, A Sweeter Prejudice, came out in 1991, and since then I've written a further 59 books, some of which have won awards in the US and the UK. I live in York, a historic city in the north of England, and waste the best part of my days planning trips away or on Facebook and Twitter, both of which mean that I end up writing late into the night. As well as romance, I write 'time slips' as Pamela Hartshorne, and am a freelance project editor and occasional writing tutor. In May 2013 I will publishing the Jessica Hart Vintage Collection of five of my early books from the 90s. For news of forthcoming books and exclusive offers, do sign up for my newsletter: email jessica@jessicahart.co.uk or come and find me on Facebook.

Leigh Michaels is the pseudonym used by LeAnn Lemberger (b. July 27 in Iowa, United States), a popular United States writer of over 85 romance novels. She has published with Harlequin, Sourcebooks, Montlake Romance, Writers Digest Books, and Arcadia Publishing. She teaches romance writing at Gotham Writers' Workshop (www.writingclasses.com) She is the author of On Writing Romance. When Leigh was fifteen she wrote her first romance novel and burned it. She burned five more complete manuscripts before submitting to a publisher. The first submission was accepted by Harlequin, the only publisher to look at it, and was published in 1984. Michaels was born in Iowa, United States. She received a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, after three years of study and maintained a 3.93 grade-point average. She received the Robert Bliss Award as top-ranking senior in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and won a national William Randolph Hearst Award for feature-writing as an undergraduate. She is married to Michael W. Lemberger, an artist-photographer.

Valerie Parv is married to her own romantic hero, Paul, a former crocodile hunter in Australia’s tropical north turned cartoonist. With no children of her own, Valerie is happy to play surrogate mother to her "rent-a-kids," Amelia and Nicholas, and to her agent's delightful twins, Kate and Eliza. "There I go again with the best of both worlds," she says. "I get all the fun of having children without any of the hard bits, a bit like the babies in my books!" After many years of living in Sydney, the marriage moved to Australia's capital city, Canberra, where they are surrounded by over half a million trees, making it the most beautiful city in the country. "I wanted the best of both worlds," says Valerie. "I love the cultural and intellectual stimulation of living in a city, but I also want the beauty and tranquility of the country where I can imagine my love stories and bring them to life on paper." Canberra has a thriving writing community and Valerie is well-known there, currently conducting writing courses and having lectured on romance writing at the University of Canberra and given workshops at the Canberra Writers' Center. With over 60 novels since 1982, and 25 million copies of her books sold internationally, including many Waldenbooks bestsellers, Valerie Parv is known as one of the Australia’s queens of romance and is recognized as their media spokesperson for all things romantic. Already a successful writer of nonfiction, Valerie has made love and romance a career. A qualified trainer and counselor, she conducts seminars and workshops on creativity and all aspects of the writing craft based on her two bestselling guides for writers: The Art of Romance Writing and The Idea Factory, adapted as an online course for writers in 2005. Also her short fiction is also regularly featured in national magazines. Valerie continues to write her page-turning novels because they affirm her belief in love and happy endings. As she says says, "Love gives you wings, romance helps you fly".