I don t know about you, but when I check out an author s bio, it s usually because I ve read a book I liked and wondered about the person behind it Let s skip the formal bio and I ll give you the inside scoop on who Roxanne St Claire really is First of all, call me Rocki Everyone does Evidently, when my mother brought me home from the hospital I seemed too scrawny and small to pull off Roxanne she d read Cyrano de Bergerac while pregnant or I would have been Judy so they called me Rocki.I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, the youngest of five overachievers, every one , and fell in love with words and stories the summer I read Gone With The Wind That year, for my twelfth birthday, my parents gave me a typewriter with italic font it was the coolest thing and from that day on, I ve had my fingers on a keyboard, pounding out love stories for fun My AP English teacher taught me the two most important lessons an aspiring author ever needs 1 verbs are the key to life and 2 a writer should get a real job After attending UCLA and graduating with a degree in communications, I tried acting and television broadcasting Oh, they aren t real jobs I learned that the hard way I changed my last name from Zink to St Claire because a news producer told me Roxanne Zink had too many harsh consonants for a TV personality apparently Katie Couric didn t get the memo I got some fun gigs, and even met Tom Hanks when I did a guest appearance on Bosom Buddies I liked on camera work, but wasn t too crazy about starvation, so I moved to Boston and got that real job In fact, I placed my foot on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder and didn t look down until I d climbed all the way up to the level of Senior Vice President at the world s largest public relations firm On the way up, I met the man of my dreams in an elevator Two years later in the same elevator he asked me to marry him and I wisely said yes.I stayed in PR, moved to Miami, had a few babies, lost my home in a hurricane, built another one a few hours north and all along, I kept writing my stories for fun One night, I read a particularly fabulous romance novel that changed my life for good That night, I decided I wanted to make someone else feel as whole and happy as that author made me feel Everyone asks It was Nobody s Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips With two small children and one big real job, writing my first novel wasn t easy, but I did finish a manuscript that managed to get the attention of a literary agent She told me to do one thing and one thing fast write another book The first one is usually a learner book, honestly That second manuscript sold to Simon Schuster s Pocket Books and was released in 2003 as Tropical Getaway Since then, I ve written almost thirty , in multiple genres, and long ago replaced the corporate ladder with the rollercoaster of publishing as a full time novelist Finally, writing is my real job.Today, I live in a small beach community in Florida with my husband and two dogs Our kids are off to college and law school, which means my nest is empty I spend my time writing, working with the kids at my church, enjoying my husband s gourmet cooking, and hanging with my many writer friends Of course, I love to read I m still crazy about words and stories and hope to write at least a hundred books in my lifetime And, yes, verbs are the key to life My favorites Love Work Believe.xoxoRocki