have always loved our westward expansion and in high school every term paper and book report I did was on our Native Americans and the old west. Especially, after I fell in love with Jeff Chandler when he played Cochise in BROKEN AROW. Now that goes back, some, but he inspired me like no one else ever did. I was 12 years old at the time when you develop crushes on movie stars. Later as an adult I had a chance to visit the very places I had written about. I even visited the place where Cochise had one of his strongholds.

I never planned to write a book but when my son, Troy, dared me to do it one day, I accepted his dare. I knew if I wrote anything it would be about Apaches and Cochise would be in there somewhere. When I sat down to write “Apache Moon,” I didn’t realize how much history I had absorbed or learned over the years and the book just flowed out of me and was finished in three months. When I finished it and asked my son to read it, I waited breathlessly for his opinion. His only comment was,” It reads like a book.” So much for a fan in the family!

But once I started the book of my heart, I found I could not stop and it ended up a trilogy. When it got published, the title was changed to APACHE WARRIOR and the publisher wanted it to end with the hero, Kayto, and heroine, Amanda, getting married in the first book. I agreed, but it broke my heart. Later, I had so many requests for the “rest of the story” and “what happened to the other characters in the book," that I finally did the sequels, APACHE PROMISE, and APACHE WINTER. They are both up on the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble NOOK as of June 7, 2011.

While in all my books the underlying story is a romance, I have included actual historical events and some notable persons from the time period. I researched the Apache Life-Way, their beliefs and customs and tried to be as accurate as possible in depicting them in a positive light. In fact, I probably lean more to the Apache’s viewpoint rather than the white man’s many times. With in the three books I try to show that love knows no color, creed or race. It happens in the heart, when and where you least expect it, and if allowed to grow, it can conquer differences in culture, hatred, and personal loss.

I belong to a local writers group, Space Coast Writers' Guild, and serves on their board as secretary. I’v also been published in CHARISMA and LITERARY LIFT-OFF magazines. In my spare time I write inspirational vignettes, verses for greeting cards, and stories for mygrandchildren.