[Forward]

All right, all of that’s true, but I was laid up with a broken wrist for six weeks and bored out of my mind, so what else could I do but write. Luckily it wasn’t my left wrist which was broken. The weather was the worst winter in years and my young son was home because of the snow days. I couldn’t drive because I had a stick shift as well as nerve damage in the right hand from the fracture.

So I pulled out a yellow legal pad and started writing. I filled page after page of horribly bad writing in the days before “head hopping” was a no-no. There was a virginal heroine who experienced one of those rape/seduction, and terribly un-PC, scenes so rampant back then. I broke all the “rules” as we know them.

When I went back to work, I spent my free time pounding my story onto a typewriter. I was lucky to have a small office with a locked door, formerly an exam room, and no one could tell if I was working myself to death or nibbling at the edges of a dream.
I discovered several things. Since I was writing a historical romance, I needed to do some research, and I didn’t know what I’d do with it after I finished.

So I stopped writing.

It took another twenty years, the invention of the PC, the Internet, RWA®… and a certain TV show before I started writing again. I never gave up the dream. I always knew if I ever acquired a word processor I’d start writing again. And I didn’t stop reading, either, but life was pretty interesting in those twenty years so I also acquired a little wisdom and knowledge along the way.

Well, I like to think I did.

What did a TV show have to do with it? I became one of those who became obsessed with La Femme Nikita and wrote fan fiction. There were so many unanswered question posed by the show that I just had to add my take to the mix. After writing a 95k word fan fiction in three months where I sent the anti-hero, Michael, to a shrink, I realized I could write a book and complete it. No problem.

No problem?