Christine Merrill wanted to be an author for as long as she can remember. But one thing stood in her way: touch typing. Six weeks spent on an IBM Selectric in her Sophomore year of high school proved that she would never be able to produce one readable page of manuscript, much less several hundred. Time passed and she found ways to pass the time: marrying her high school sweetheart; having two kids; and taking an assortment of jobs in professional theater costume shops, including a miserable year and a half spent styling wigs for a certain hamburger-selling clown.

When she got tired of theater, she got another degree and became a librarian, a job that had fewer clowns, and a lot more books.

During that time, someone invented word processing and a reliable spell checker. She returned to her childhood dream, only to discover that there was more to the whole writing thing than accurate typing. The next years were spent learning to tell stories that people might want to read, and trying to find someone who wanted to buy them. Her chance came when she won the RWA's Golden Heart Competition for unpublished manuscripts. The winning story, soon to be known as THE INCONVENIENT DUCHESS, was bought by the contest judges, the delightful editors at Mills & Boon, in England.

Many more books followed, including this one. She is more than slightly jealous that her stories travel the world while she stays home in Wisconsin.