How Do I Love Thee? (39 page)

A
NN
C
HARLTON’S
contemporary romances have been published by Harlequin, and her short stories have appeared in literary and popular magazines and anthologies. Under another name, she has won a Golden Dagger Award for mystery writing. She has studied humanities and criminology,
loves gardening and is a devoted patchworker and fabric collector living and working in Brisbane.

V
ALERIE
P
ARV
has published over seventy books, which have sold more than twenty-six million copies internationally and have been translated into languages as diverse as Russian, Japanese and Icelandic. Most recently she was contributing editor of
Heart and Craft
(Allen & Unwin, 2009), an insiders’ guide to romance writing. With a Master of Arts and a diploma in professional counselling, she conducts seminars and workshops on creativity and the writer’s craft. A successful writer of nonfiction before turning to romantic suspense, Valerie says she began writing to see
if
she could do it. The challenge looks like keeping her busy for a long time to come. Her website is
www.valerieparv.com
.

Multi-published author A
LEXIS
F
LEMING
admits to being a little bit strange and a whole lot quirky. Her world is peopled by interesting characters and exciting possibilities. Her first love has always been romance—hot, sizzling relationships with a dash of comedy. Alexis writes fun, sassy erotic contemporary stories as well as paranormal and fantasies with everything from sexy shapeshifters to beings from other planets. When not writing, she helps her own personal hero run a large motel on the edge of a national marine park in New South
Wales. She loves to hear from readers and her website is
www.alexisfleming.net
.

By day, A
NNE
-M
AREE
B
RITTON
is the Director of the ACT Writers Centre, supporting the interests of writers in the Canberra region. By night she is a short story writer. Her last collection was
Wicked Women
(Ginninderra Press). She has a background in educational video scriptwriting, and has two adult children and a pattern of choosing imperfect partners.

Growing up in Sydney in the 1960s and ’70s, S
ONNY
W
HITELAW
says she was always drawn to tales of epic quests. ‘You know the type: an everyday kid from Kansas, The Shire or maybe Tatooine, is thrust upon a journey where he—or, more rarely, she—must endure terrible challenges and battle monsters. Of course, the deadliest landscapes in these stories were moral quagmires, and the worst monsters were found lurking in the depths of the human soul.’ Her own journey through life may not have been as epic, but it has been adventurous. She spent twenty years writing articles and taking photographs for magazines including
National Geographic
. One evening, while she was sitting on the edge of a volcano, ashy margarita in hand, a couple of her friends convinced her to try writing fiction, and about the consequences of climate change. She
has since published eight novels, five of them based on the MGM television series
Stargate
. Her website is:
www.sonnywhitelaw.com
.

C
RAIG
C
ORMICK
is an award-winning Canberra author and science journalist. He has published over a hundred short stories and ten books with small and mainstream publishers. His awards include a Queensland Premier’s Award in 2007 and the ACT Book of the Year Award in 1999. He is former chair of the ACT Writers Centre and has taught creative writing at university and high schools. He has been a Writer in Residence at the University Sains Malaysia, and in 2008, travelled to Antarctica on an Antarctic Arts Fellowship. He has a particular interest in filling in the often unspoken voices in historical fiction, which sometimes overlaps into writing about men’s perspectives on relationships.

J
UDY
N
EUMANN’S
short stories have appeared in numerous magazines, and she has recently completed her first novel. As a freelance business writer, she has written countless articles, press releases and advertisements. She is a member of Romance Writers of Australia and Romance Writers of America. A world traveller and expatriate American, she resides in Sydney with her beloved Aussie husband and pampered pooch.

D
APHNE
C
LAIR
has written seventy-something novels for
Harlequin/Silhouette/Mills
& Boon and other publishers, including the historical novel,
Gather the Wind
(HarperCollins, NZ). As Daphne de Jong, her short stories have been published around the world, included in anthologies and in her collection
Crossing the Bar
(David Ling Publishing, NZ). Numerous poems and articles have appeared in New Zealand and overseas. A finalist in the Rita Awards (as Laurey Bright) from Romance Writers of America, Daphne’s literary awards include the Lilian Ida Smith Award for nonfiction, and New Zealand’s prestigious Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award. She teaches and coaches writers through the very successful, world-famous-in-New-Zealand Kara School of Writing. Her website is
www.daphneclair.com
.

AJ M
ACPHERSON
is a freelance writer, journalist and editor. Her work has included feature writing for a national equestrian magazine, web copy, advertorials and executive editor duties. She has had short fiction published in a women’s magazine, and has collected awards for unpublished manuscripts. In 2009 her contemporary fantasy manuscript won Romance Writers of Australia’s Emerald Award. AJ is married, has two lovely stepdaughters, and lives in country New South Wales.

A
LAN
G
OLD
has written fifteen books, which have been published internationally and translated into Asian and European languages. He is an opinion columnist and book reviewer for
The Australian
and the literary magazine
Good Reading
. He is also a speechwriter for leading political figures. Alan has travelled throughout the world on behalf of a human rights NGO and addressed United Nations and other international forums on issues as diverse as social equity and new ways of fighting racism. He is published by Penguin in the United States and Canada, HarperCollins in the United Kingdom and Australasia, Edition Michel LaFon in France, Editorial ViaMagna in Spain and South America, and Arabesque Books in Russia. His most recent publication in the United States and Canada is
The Pirate Queen
. It is under option to be made into a movie, for which he has just finished writing the screenplay.

The author of forty-five published novels, A
NNA
J
ACOBS
freely confesses to an addiction to storytelling. Fortunately she is not very domesticated, so has plenty of time to produce two to three novels a year, writing sagas for one publisher and modern fiction for another. She is fascinated by women’s history and by the challenges they face in today’s changing world. Her story is based on a novella originally commissioned by the Southern Forest Arts Group of Northcliffe (yes, it’s a
real town) in Western Australia. Ex-servicemen, with their wives and children, were settled in groups, to help one another. Anna wrote
The Group Settler’s Wife
, a longer version of this story, then wrote
Freedom’s Land,
a full-length novel with the same background. Her books have been nominated several times for Australian Romantic Book of the Year, which she won in 2006, and she is among the top few most-borrowed authors of adult fiction in English libraries. She’s still in love with her own personal hero and they live half the year in Australia and half in England.