I know what it looks like:  Former lawyer decides to write romance novels.

To be honest, it was the other way around:  Failed romance writer needs paying job; goes to law school.  And that was almost twenty years ago.

I wrote my first (bad) romance in my teens.  I submitted it to Harlequin and was not surprised when they rejected it.  (I may even have been reassured.  A bit like Groucho Marx, I wouldn’t want to read a genre that would include my work.)

I wrote my second (not-quite-as-bad) romance in my 20s.  I got a lovely rejection letter from Leslie Wainger saying, in effect, not this but send us your next one.  I didn’t write another novel for almost 30 years.  (And they say “fear of success” is a myth . . .)

So after earning degrees in biology (failed pre-med) and philosophy (failed academic), I failed to get into the Culinary Institute of America.  (I call this my “love of failure” period.)  When I realized I needed to make money, I enjoyed brief stints as an editorial assistant to a statistician, representing a day care center before the USDA, testing hearing in a flour mill, and packing pottery at night, among other things.  I finally got a real job in public health.  Somehow that led to law school.  (Which led to a federal clerkship, a job in litigation at the number two law firm in Philadelphia, marriage to a British patent attorney, the purchase of a 200+ year old house in Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains, my first divorce and second British husband, taking family law court appointments in my county, being a mediator, and ultimately taking inactive status as a lawyer — a technical term that means I pay the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania $70 a year to let me not practice law.  I figure it’s worth it…)

Throughout all this, the story ideas never stopped.  I’ve been matching up lawyers romantically in my head for 15 years; clearly it’s time to see if I can write their stories.

Next step: get my amorous attorneys into the hands of eager readers …