Amy Garvey (edit name/settings)

I'm an author and a reader. And a wife and a mom and a daughter and a friend and a procrastinator and a cake fanatic and a tea addict ...

When I was eleven, I wrote my first “grown up” short story. A college girl meets a cute, slightly older guy at an ice cream shop in New York City (okay, it wasn’t completely grown up) and, as you might have guessed, sparks fly! There’s witty banter, an unexpected kiss, and a good-bye (since they’re both due other places after their midday sugar infusion). But lo and behold, Cute Older Guy turns out to be College Girl’s professor! It was, although I didn’t know it then, my first romance. (Or at least the beginning of one.) Complete with meet-cute and built-in conflict!

I didn’t write romance again for a long time after that (unless you count the bizarre short stories my best friend and I wrote featuring ourselves and the boys we liked in middle school), and I didn’t read much of it outside of young adult stuff. I was, of course, going to write the Great American Novel, probably before I was out of high school. (I was also going to move to New York and live in the Dakota. On my good looks and charm, I guess.)Even when that didn’t pan out quite the way I’d planned–shocker!–I didn’t give up. I was always writing something, whether it was tortured adolescent poetry, short stories, the beginnings of novels, or articles.

My talent was finally recognized at a local uburban newspaper –where I wrote thoughtful and highly underrated feature stories on the long-running square dancing group, the newest Eagle Scout candidates, and local authors who had finally Hit It Big.

Along the way, I’d married my husband, and given birth to our oldest son, Jake. For a while, I was consumed with visions of myself as the ultimate earth mother, making wholesome organic meals every night to nurture our baby, after days spent teaching him at least one additional language, making representations of famous statues out of homemade play dough for his educational benefit, and sewing his clothes myself to make sure everything that touched his tender skin was soft, breathable, and, of course, really, really cute. (That may have been during the most serious stage of sleep deprivation.)

So I started work part-time at Kensington Publishing, where I was an editorial girl-of-all-tasks. I opened mail, I sent out galleys and covers to authors, and I filed, but I also got to read manuscripts. And I rediscovered romance.

Which had changed during my years away from it! While I was busy elsewhere, romance had flung open the bedroom door and invited readers in. The genre had expanded to include screwball comedy and heart-pounding action and ghosts, among other things. I was surprised — and pleased. Pleased to be working for a house who published so much of it, for one, and even more pleased to discover that I really liked writing it.

After a few detours into ghostwriting and young adult fiction, I’m very much at home writing romance now. (And yes, I write romance at home. Nice, how that turned out.) “Home” is also beautiful Central New York, where my three children, my very patient husband, and our overweight dog Lucy let me hang around and grumble about deadlines while they make sure I remember to eat something other than cheese doodles.