Barbara McMahon grew up in northern Virginia, moving to California to attend the University of California at Berkeley. Upon graduation, she remained in California, making the San Francisco Bay Area her home base while she worked as a flight attendant for an international airline.
When McMahon’s flying days ended, she began to work in the computer industry, rising to a vice presidency in a software development firm. In her "spare time," she decided to give in to a long cherished desire to try her hand at writing. One of the first things she discovered was that writing was one thing, but getting a book written is difficult to do when things like real-life interfere. But finally she finished a book, submitted it to a publisher, and Harlequin Mills & Boon bought it!
Come into the Sun (1983) was the first of over three dozen books sold to Harlequin Mills & Boon and Silhouette.
To date, over five-and-a-half-million copies of her books have sold in thirty-five different countries in nineteen different languages.
McMahon is a member of Romance Writers of America, Novelists, Inc.