Cami Dalton

Cami has always been a huge fan of romance. A friend of hers likes to tease and say that if Cami has spent as much time reading scientific textbooks as she has romance novels, she'd have come up with a cure for cancer by now. Cami's not sure she agrees, but after reading hundreds of stories within the genre, she will admit that she's learned a fascinating array of facts on topics as varied as the battles of Culloden and Waterloo, to the horrors of life as a guttersnipe in the Seven Dials of London, to the cost of fossilized amber on today's black market. (She's also picked up a few tricks involving certain parts of the male anatomy and several ounces of chocolate, but doesn't want to bore anyone with the details — ha!) But even more importantly, Cami learned how to write her own romantic stories. She supposes that growing up with a name like Camille Dumas, her romantic inclinations were much sealed into the package at birth. And for those of you wondering, yes, Alexander Dumas wrote Camille. She has no idea what her parents were thinking. Yes, her father's from France, but her parents also went with Margaret for her middle name. So, if you've ever read the story, you'll realize that she's almost completely named after a...uh, well...a hooker. In large measure, Cami believes her writing career is owed to a newspaper article about a young, local woman, Leslie Kelly (award-winning author of numerous books for Harlequin Temptation, Harlequin Blaze and HQN Books), who'd recently sold her first romance to the HarlequinTemptation line. The article gave the dates and times where guests could hear her speak and a local RWA chapter where new writers could attend meetings. Two years later, Cami was the vice president of that chapter, Space Coast Authors of Romance (STAR), and Leslie was one of her best friends. Three and a half years later, Cami sold her very first book to the Harlequin Temptation line. Her first title, Her Private Dancer, was a Temptation Heat release in April 2004. Before Cami began writing, she was a registered nurse in Labor and Delivery for tens years. A certified childbirth educator as well, she enjoyed interacting with the soon-to-be moms and their terrified labor partners. She lives in a small beachside town on the east coast of sunny Florida, with her husband, her two amazingly cute yet wild little boys, two English bulldogs and one miniature dachshund. In her spare time — between writing steamy love scenes — Cami homeschools her two boys, though she plans to quit doing this once she locates some sort of military academy that will take first and fifth graders. At present, she's working on her next book for the Harlequin Temptation series.