When Rachel Lee was 9 years old, her mother would tell her to go out and play, but, instead, she hid in the basement reading and writing stories. There was nothing she enjoyed more. For many years Rachel continued to write for herself and her friends, often cramming her efforts into days busy with work and care for her children.

She was not afraid to take on huge challenges, and purely for the pleasure, she worked for five years writing a biographical novel of the Duke of Wellington. The day she finished, she threw a party for her friends...and the book still languishes in a box in storage. Well, it wound up being 1000 pages long! (Once she even had to trek to Boulder to retrieve sample chapters from an agent who had kept them for a year, and never responded to requests to return them. Since these were the days of typewriters and carbon paper, she was darned if she was going let that many pages go!)

Name a part of the U.S. and the odds are she has resided there -- from the frozen North (Michigan, Upstate New York, and North Dakota) to the South (Florida and Mississippi), from the low-lying hills of the Old West (Texas) to the heights of the Rockies (Colorado), and all three coasts of the contiguous United States (Oregon, and Long Island, and various places along the Emerald Coast).  She can also recite a string of occupations to go with her travels: selling houses on top of mountains, acting as a security specialist to the U.S. Department of Defense, programming computers, working as an optician and more.

Rachel is, above all, a student and observer of people. She draws upon her experiences in life as a source of creative insight and inspiration. From anthropology to computer science, from UFOs to Atlantis theories, from history to contemporary social issues, there’s little that has not or might not attract her inquisitive attention.

Her interests include traveling to exotic places, such as St. Augustine Florida, the Mayan Ruins of Tulum and Altun Ha, and touring the countrysides of Europe, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. She is an avid fan of suspense and paranormal novels as well as political thrillers. Rachel also likes to spend her time with good movies, solving Sudoku puzzles, going for long evening walks and researching upcoming novels.

For Rachel, Conard County remains a very special and personal place. Each of her characters is a carefully crafted echo of part of herself. The gritty pain of the heroes and heroines, the warmth and appeal of small-town USA, and the romance of the Old West come together in her stories.

She is excited to begin her journey anew into Conard County, and hopes that you will be too.

Rachel Lee is a New York Times best-selling author and the winner of five Romantic Times magazine Reviewers' Choice Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and is a five-time finalist for the Romance Writers of America's RITA® Award. She has penned a wide variety of novels in several genres including fantasy, romantic suspense, and romantic comedy. She resides in Tampa, Florida.