Barbara was born in San Diego, California, but basically was raised all over the United States; at least that’s what it seemed like when she had to list the twenty-three schools she’d attended in her college application. Most of the moving around was during World War II when her father’s job took him to the East Coast and back again with a great two and a half years living in Tucson, Arizona.

Barbara and her sister and brother learned to adapt to new places. They lived at the edge of the Dismal Swamp in North Carolina, fed the ducks in Fenway Park in Boston where Barbara went to Girls Latin School, and experienced their only hurricane in Charleston, South Carolina. They also lived in New York City, then moved back to the San Diego area, and finally the Los Angeles, and Orange county areas of California.

Some of those years have become part of Barbara’s fictional characters’ backgrounds.

Barbara says, “You’d think I’d had enough traveling and moving. Not quite. After teaching in Kindergarten and First Grade in California for five years, I took a job in Nome, Alaska. It was a fantastic experience. Nome was where I tasted whale blubber (tastes sort of nut-like), had a ride in an umiak (a forty-passenger boat made out of driftwood with oogrook hide stretched over it) and walked out on the frozen Norton Sound.”

Now that Barbara’s retired after thirty-four years of teaching, she’s excited by her new and growing career in writing. “Growing” hardly describes Barbara’s leaps and bounds of recent achievements. Her novel A Breath Of Heather (the second book in her popular and best-selling Sons of Earth & Wind series) won First Place in the Paranormal, Time Travel, Fantasy category of the 2001 Orange Rose Award contest. Additionally, the book was named a finalist in both Affaire de Coeur’s Reader-Writer poll and in the Daphne Du Maurier Award (Paranormal Category). Moreover, A Touch of Fire (the third book in the Sons of Earth & Wind series) was christened the winner of the 2001 Golden Quill Award in the paranormal romance category. The literary world, not to mention the voracious fans of paranormal romance, wonders why she didn’t retire years earlier with the quality of product she continually produces. Indeed, in 2002, two of Barbara’s novels—Dangerous Haven and Deserts Of The Heart—also became finalists in the 2002 Crystal Globe Awards, for “Best Overall Romantic Fiction”!!!

Expect both Tears of the Desert Rose and Jade Dreams, books Five and Six in the Sons of Earth & Wind series, to become additional award-winners. Both titles will be available in the near future!