RITA® Award Finalist Michelle Willingham grew up in a military household that took her all over the world, including Thailand, Germany, and England. She wrote her first historical romance at the age of twelve and was delighted to fill up eight pages of a legal pad. As her binders of stories grew, she was convinced that one day she would achieve her dream of being an author. Thankfully, most of her early stories have been destroyed and are unavailable for blackmail. She attended the University of Notre Dame where she thought about studying medicine. Since Michelle passes out at the sight of blood, she decided that this was not a good career move. She studied English instead and graduated summa cum laude with the idea of becoming an editor. Her first part-time job involved editing mortgage handbooks, which sent her fleeing back to graduate school for a degree in middle school education. Michelle taught school for eleven years before retiring to stay home with her children and write full time. She married a rocket scientist, and they live in southeastern Virginia. When she isn’t writing historical romances, she loves to cook, read, and avoid exercise at all costs. (From the Author's web-site.)