Remember the days when our parents or grandparents stayed in the same job or occupation for most of their lives? My grandfather worked for the same big metropolitan newspaper for 45 years! I read somewhere that the typical American will change jobs an average of seven times in his or her lifetime. That seems like a lot to me, especially since I’ve only done it once. Sort of – I started out as a staff nurse, became a nursing instructor for awhile, and spent most of my career in Intensive Care. (That is not me at the left, by the way). So I stayed within the field, but worked in several different specialties. My husband’s career has been that way, too. He’s a research scientist, but he has more than one specialty. He started doing medical research, then went to industrial chemistry, then into pharmaseuticals, and now he’s back to medical research. (That’s not him on the right, either, although we do tease him about being a mad scientist! )

For the past ten years, I’ve practiced a totally different career – writing books. Full-length novels. And my writing career was the first time I’d truly started over – started from scratch, as it were. As in any new profession, there was lots to learn, and I don’t think that will ever end. I’ve written 17 novels, and now I can brag about another new venture within the field. Short stories.

If you’ll look under the ‘new release’ banner at the right, you’ll see a book cover for The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance, which is being released today. The headliners in this volume are Linda Howard and Jude Devereaux and there are lots of other terrific authors who contributed. I was also asked to write a story to this volume, which was a first for me. I’d never written a short story before (well, not since about 6th grade), nor have I ever been given license to do whatever I wanted with it. My only guideline was to make it some kind of a time travel story.

The obvious thing would have been for me to write something historical – I could have had a character from the Regency period show up in the present time. Or the reverse. Instead, I decided to go with a man from the future and bring him back to the present to deal with an issue that will have an impact on his time.  So it’s quite a change for me – and it was a lot of fun. It was so much fun that I agreed to write a second one for The Mammoth Book of Irish Romance which comes out next month, and a third for The Mammoth Book of Regency Romance – out in June. If you’re looking for something with short, fun stories, give The Mammoth Book a try!

In the meantime, I’d be interested in hearing about your new starts. Tell us about a big change you’ve made, and I’ll pick one poster to receive a copy of Taken by the Laird, my October release from Avon.