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| About Us |
Lynna graduated from Watsonville High School, where her father taught English, and from Scripps College in Claremont, California, before embarking on her first career as an editor and technical writer for Stanford Research Institute and later for Lockheed. She also taught English and journalism at Santa Cruz High School for a number of years.
An amateur pianist and harpsichordist, Lynna performs on psaltery, harp, and recorders with two medieval music groups and coaches ensembles in her spare time.
Lynna's first novel, Western Rose, based on Oregon family history, was published by harlequin Historicals in 1996. Crusader's Lady (March 2007), set during the Third Crusade is her latest book and a departure from the Westerns for which she is well known. More information and a complete backlist can be found at her website.
Lynna is Monterey Bay Fiction Writers' Literary Chair and she heads the Mentoring Program. Email her at Carolynw at cruzio.com or visit her website to read more about her and see book excerpts.
She divides her time between jewelry design, gardening and water fitness, having become a certified water aerobics instructor. Currently she is at work on a medieval set in 12th century Wales.
Suzanne is chapter Webmistress, and lives in Northern California's Coastal mountains. She thinks her bit of heaven, if not in the Santa Cruz mountains, would be in a West Cork cottage overlooking the Irish Sea. Visit her website to read excerpts of her stories or check out her informative page on Irish patriot Michael Collins or visit her Ireland for Visitors travel site.
Email Suzanne at sbarrett at cruzio.com.
Of the Conger Twins, Ellen lives in Santa Cruz, California. Jo lives miles away in Bakersfield, California with her husband, and their collection of pets.
Ellen, currently the Monterey Bay Fiction Writers Vice-President, joined Futuristic, Fantasy and Paranormal, a cyber-Chapter of RWA, and started writing Fantasy. Return of the Goddess Trilogy is a “short story” that Ellen wrote initially for her youngest daughter, Makai. It's about a young princess who through her misadventures learns to appreciate the realms in her safe keeping, as well as her people.
By the Fall of 1994, she’d written five complete books and one novella when she made her first sale. She currently writes for Red Sage, Changeling Press, Ellora's cave and Cerridwen Press. In 2008, she'll be published with Harlequin's newest e-book enterprise - Spice Briefs.
Alice loves the ultra sensual and was first published in Volume 1 of Red Sage's Secrets, the very first erotic romance. Her imagination runs toward the fantastic--including men who are also motorcycles, a sage who controls the weather, and alternative universes.
She lives in Oakland, California with two pet corn snakes and two stray cats. When she's not writing, she's usually cooking or watching the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland A's.
Her advice to anyone who wants to write comes from the good people at Nike. "Just do it!" And to anyone with a dream, she repeats the words of the late basketball coach, Jim Valvano. "Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up."
For information on where to order Alice's books, visit her website or contact her by email: algaines at pacbell.net.
Cat says she's poked around in many different genres. She's written fan fiction for a number of different TV shows, tried her hand at horror and fantasy, but in the end came back to what she enjoys most - writing about the intimate relationships between men and women, and how love doesn't always happen the way we expect.
Back in 2004, when Cat became unable to work outside her home, her incredibly supportive husband suggested that she turn this setback into an opportunity, and pursue her dream of becoming a published author. Several years - and untold buckets of sweat later - that dream is finally coming to fruition.
THE ARRANGEMENT, an erotic romance featuring a menage a trois, is scheduled to be published May 5, 2008, by Lyrical Press. See Cat's website for more details.
In 1995 she began to write stories set on the advancing American frontier under the name Elizabeth Grayson. Her eleventh book, MOON IN THE WATER, was set on aboard a riverboat and garnered recognition as both a finalist for the Romance Writers RITA award and for the prestigious Willa Cather Literary Award.
A SIMPLE GIFT, her first contemporary novel written as Karyn Witmer, was a Literary Guild exclusive in 2005. The paperback arrived in bookstores in September 2006.
Karyn/Elizabeth still enjoys teaching. She occasionally teaches a course on Popular Fiction at a local college, and is a frequent speaker at writers' conferences around the country. She collects miniature English cottages, enjoys needlework, and has a weakness for antique jewelry. She is happily married to a former advertising executive and devotes much of her time to playing "Auntie Mame" to two her nieces.
For information on where to order Elizabeth's books, visit her website or contact her by email: elizagray99 at yahoo.com.
 Santa Cruz, California All contents Copyright ©2001-2008. All rights reserved. |
Lynna Banning combines a lifelong love of history and literature into a satisfying career as a writer. Born in Oregon, she has lived in Northern California most of her life. Currently she lives in Felton, near Roaring Camp in the Santa Cruz Mountains, with her two canaries.
Suzanne Barrett began writing nineteen years ago and has published four books and one novella.
JoEllen Conger is a twin writing team, who began their career when one was undergoing Chemotherapy. They joined Romance Writers of America, a national writer’s organization, in January 1989. Both have written and published instruction manuals, poetry, cooking, and metaphysical books. For fun they turned to fiction. Each writes separately under her own name, yet they share their common beginnings with a combined name when working together.
Alice Gaines began her flight into fantasy in 1990 in order to escape from the reality of a miserable secretarial job. She'd never written fiction before, so it was a complete shock to discover that she loved writing romance. But then, she'd always entertained herself with dreams and stories of her own making. Why not put them down on paper and - maybe, maybe with a lot of perseverance and a tiny bit of luck – share the stories with other people?
Karen Witmer/Elizabeth Grayson was published for the first time when she was in the fourth grade. She finished a historical novel at fifteen. After a successful career teaching art in elementary schools and at the St. Louis Art Museum, she began to dabble in writing again. In 1986 her Waldenbook Award-winning novel LOVE, HONOR AND BETRAY was published under the name Elizabeth Kary.