Val Athey lives in Ontario, which is quite a change from her native North Carolina. Up there she is a wife, mom, and jack-of-all-trades who is known to those close to her to have at least a half-dozen projects of various kinds going at once, from literary to artistic to home improvement. One day she finally decided to start moving the various stories out of her head and into print, with Dolce con Brio being the first, and plans to continue doing so despite the best efforts of her small offspring as well as two aggressively nosy and affectionate cats. After all, she is a hopeless romantic and feels adding a bit more love to the world is never a bad thing.