Kathy Otten is a working mom who lives in the open farm country of western NY with a husband and three college age kids.
 
She grew up in a small Vermont farm town where her parents owned the general store.  Her mom collected antiques and her dad loved the old movie cowboys.  Consequently, she and her brothers grew up watching  Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger, and John Wayne on TV, and visiting places like Old Sturbridge Village and the Shelburne Museum.  Always a nut for horses, her parents gave her a Quarter Horse mare and she had horses in her life for the next thirty-four years.
 
The Nation's Bicentennial sparked an interest in Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain boys and she and her brothers spent many hours tromping through cow pastures looking at the ruins of forts which once guarded Lake Champlain.  It was fascinating to wonder about the forgotten men who long ago, trod those historic places, and left remnants of themselves behind.  On the parade grounds of a fort at Crown Point, NY,  is the carving of a cannon on a large, flat stone.  Done well over two hundred years ago, by some anonymous British solider far from home, anyone who sees it can't help but wonder who he was, if he made it back to his family, or if he was killed by a ball from an American long rifle.  Images like these became fodder for Kathy's imagination, and notebooks began to accumulate under her bed.
 
She actually began her writing career in elementary school, creating such work as Lucky the Dog and The Lost Uranium Mine.  Her mom praised them both as the greatest pieces of literature ever written, and today Mom is still her greatest supporter. 
 
Her high school days were spent with her nose in books by Max Brand, Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour.  History, English and Creative Writing were easy A's.  We won't discuss Algebra, Biology or gym class.  But during this time Kathy wrote a short story called The Letter, about a teenage boy dealing with the death of his brother.  She entered it in a contest and as a winner, the story was published in Young Ambassador, a magazine for Christian teens.
 
Not much writing was done during the next few years.  Marriage, kids and a dairy farm came along.  It was while nursing the kids in the middle of the night, she discovered that without cable TV, the Harlequins in the grocery check out line, (that's where they put them back then) were a good way to pass the time.  With a baby in one hand and a paperback in the other, came the epiphany that comes to most writers when they read a Harlequin, "Why, I can write a better story than this!" 
 
Out came the notebooks and the eventual realization that writing a romance is not as easy at it would seem.  As a matter of fact it was down right hard.  After a few rejection letters the notebooks went back under the bed. 
 
It wasn't until the cows were sold and the kids were all in school that a neighbor offered her their old computer.  And what could be done with an old computer lacking internet service?  Out came the notebooks.  This time Kathy decided to get serious and started to read about the craft of writing.  The old stories were rewritten and rewritten.  Her Mom was still a great moral support, but all her feedback was positive.  It was time to seek out more objective opinions, and Kathy joined two area writers groups.  The help from other struggling writers has been invaluable and her writing has been moving forward ever since.
 
To relax she enjoys taking long walks with her two large dogs, who usually drag her along behind them while they root through the tall grass and underbrush of the woods and fields they trek. In the winter she likes to curl up with a good book and one or two of her four cats, while the snow blows outside. In between the kids, her job and the animals, she is usually found in front of her computer, weaving stories of laughter, heartache and love for the crazy cast of characters swirling around in her head.