Okay, let's get the hard stuff out of the way right up front. Leigh is a man! He knows men aren't supposed to write romance, but he does and he doesn't intend to quit. He says it's fun. If you're still mad, you can blame it on his wife. He wouldn't have known what romance was if, after he got married in 1972, romances hadn't started collecting all over the house. They were everywhere he looked-in the den, on the kitchen table, in the living room, stacked along one whole wall in the bedroom, even in the bathroom. When his wife wasn't cooking or taking care of the children, she was reading a romance. He admits he was a little supercilious about her choice of reading material. After all, he was reading Dickens, Hemingway, Austen, the classics! He started calling them her "sin, lust, and passion" books. He said it so often his daughter started calling them Mommy's "celeste" passion books. He thought it was riotously funny. His wife didn't. One day, after what he's certain was a typically rude remark (you have to understand he'd never read a romance, just looked at the covers and made a snap judgment), she threw a book at him and told him to read it or shut up. Being an obedient husband (his wife's expletive deleted!), he read the book. It was Georgette Heyer's These Old Shades. He loved it. To this day it's one of his favorite books. Being thoroughly hooked, he searched new and used bookstores until he'd collected every book Georgette Heyer ever wrote. After reading them all several times, he asked his wife to suggest some other books. Since he has a minor in history, she started him on a diet of the icons of early historical romance: Kathleen Woodiwiss, Rosemary Rogers, Jennifer Blake, Bertrice Small, and Johanna Lindsey. By then he was completely addicted. Somewhere along the line, he read that women could make decent money (more than he could as a music teacher) writing historical romances, so he tried to get his wife to write one. She told him she couldn't write, that he ought to write one. He said he couldn't think of a plot. This went back and forth for some time until he said if she'd give him a plot, he'd write a book. She said, "I've lost everything." It wasn't a plot, but it must have been enough. He sat down and started writing. Eight hundred and eighty-nine pages later, he had finished his first romance. He didn't know much about writing, and nothing at all about the romance market, so he had to write two more books and join Romance Writers of America before he knew enough to sell his first book. Wyoming Wildfire was published by Zebra in 1987. Since then he's written 34 more books and four novellas. He's recently celebrated his 60th birthday, so he calls writing his midlife crisis career. He has a B.A. in Voice and an M.A. in Musicology from the University of North Carolina. He taught music in schools and/or was an organist/choir director in churches for 32 years before retiring to write full-time. He's been married for 29 years. His wife is a nurse, but after years of working in a hospital on weekends to help make ends meet, she took a full-time job in an HMO. She said she was too old to be a hospital nurse any longer. He thinks having three children and being married to him just wore the poor lady down. They have three grown children (notice he didn't say mature or responsible!) who are momentarily living in distant parts of the United States. He enjoys gardening when he can find time off from writing and his duties as husband, father-at-a-distance, and slave to the family cat. You may contact Leigh at LeighGwood@aol.com or by writing to P.O. Box 470761, Charlotte, NC 28226. An SASE would be appreciated. Leigh's web page address is www.tlt.com/authors/leighgreenwood.htm.
