I wrote my first novel at age 11. It was about a sorceress who had to defeat a devilishly good-looking evil wizard, and it was pretty much a copy of Ursula LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, with added romance. I followed that up by plagiarising The Dark is Rising, The Diary of Anne Frank, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

They were all terrible.

I spent most of my free time at the library in Rumford, Maine, reading everything I could get my hands on. I used to sneak Harlequin Temptations into the biography section and read them standing up while I was pretending to be doing research.

As I matured, my stories got more original. My best friend Kathy and I spent all of our study halls and most of our chemistry lessons scribbling stories about ourselves and various celebrities. My oeuvre was rapidly expanded to include The Beatles Book, The Monkees Book, The Gorgeous Neighbour Possessed By The Devil Book, and The Vampire Book.

Unlike my early work, I look back on these co-written novels with great pride.

I studied at Brown University, earning a summa cum laude degree with honours in English. I became a peer writing tutor and drew a weekly cartoon for the Brown Daily Herald entitled “Georgie and Squid,” about an Elvis lookalike with a pet cephalopod.

During my junior year abroad at New Hall College, Cambridge University, I fell in love with the United Kingdom. I moved there in 1992 to pursue a postgraduate degree in English literature at the University of Reading. My M.Phil. thesis was a study of fairies in late nineteenth and early twentieth century children’s fiction.

After finding a career as a secondary school English teacher, I started writing humorous, sexy women’s fiction and romance. My first three novels were all rejected, some of them several times. The fourth one was a 2004 short contemporary Golden Heart finalist, and I sold that one. It was one of the most memorable days in my life when the editor from Harlequin rang me to tell me they were going to buy my book. I’ve written several other novels for the Mills & Boon Modern Extra line, and I also write romances for Headline’s Little Black Dress imprint.

Lately, I’ve gained a measure of national press attention for giving a series of seminars on how to write sex scenes. I also occasionally write academic pieces for emagazine, aimed at A-level English students.

I live in Berkshire, England, with my husband, a guitar tech for rock bands, and our son. I still discuss all of my stories with my high school friend Kathy Love, who writes for Kensington Zebra and Brava. I teach English, am teased daily about my American accent, and still wouldn’t mind having a gorgeous neighbour possessed by the devil.