Cheryl Reavis

Cheryl Reavis is an award-winning short story and romance author who has also written under the name of Cinda Richards. She describes herself as a "late bloomer" who played in her first piano recital at the tender age of 30."We had to line up by height. I was the third-smallest kid, right behind my son," she says. "My son had to keep explaining that no, I wasn't his sister, I was his mom. Apparently, among his peers, participating in a piano recital was a very unusual thing for a mother to do.""After that, there was no stopping me. I gave myself permission to attempt my heart's other desire - to write." Her Silhouette Special Edition novel, A Crime of the Heart, reached millions of readers in Good Housekeeping magazine. Her Harlequin Historical titles, The Bride Fair and The Prisoner, and Silhouette Special Edition books, A Crime of the Heart and Patrick Gallagher's Widow, are all winners of the Romance Writers of America's RITA Award. The Bartered Bride, another Harlequin Historical, was a RITA finalist, as was her single title Promise Me a Rainbow. One of Our Own received the Career Achievement Award for Best Innovative Series Romance from Romantic Times Magazine, and The Long Way Home has been nominated by Romantic Times for Best Silhouette Special Edition title. Her Silhouette Special Edition book, The Older Woman, was chosen best contemporary category romance the year it was published by two online reader groups. Southern born and bred, and of German and Hispanic descent, Cheryl describes her upbringing as "very multicultural.""I grew up eating enchiladas, kraut dumplings, hush puppies and grits," she says. "But not at the same time." A former public health nurse, Cheryl makes her home in North Carolina with her husband and the surviving half of the formidable feline duo known as "The Girls."