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All About Trish Milburn

The first book I ever wrote was a romance. I just didn’t know it yet. That book, Land of the Misty Gems, was a class project way back in the sixth grade. We wrote the text, illustrated them with colored pencils, even bound them with twine and pasted a fabric cover on our creations. I still have that book. It was the beginning of my writing career, even if until the early 1990s that writing consisted mainly of research papers and essay test questions and then newspaper articles.

Let’s back up a moment. I was born and grew up in Kentucky and began reading so long ago I don’t remember how it all started. I do remember loving a little book called The Runaway Pancake, then the regular treasures that would appear in our mailbox from the Weekly Reader Book Club, then books like the Little House on the Prairie series. The library was one of my favorite places. And even though being a bookworm didn’t do wonders for my social life when I was in my teens, I wouldn’t trade my love of books for the world.

That love of reading and writing has brought me joy and some of the most wonderful friends a girl could have, including the members of the Romance Bandits.

Since I wasn’t a math genius and didn’t particularly have a passion for the frog dissection required in biology class, I gravitated naturally toward writing. So I began writing for the school paper in middle school and kept on writing for papers through the years immediately after I received my print journalism degree. Until I left to try my hand at writing at home full-time, I was a magazine editor/writer.

I was given my first romance to read during my teens by my friend Jennifer and her mom, Jeanie, and haven’t stopped reading them since. I began writing my first romance, a historical set along the Oregon Trail (the only historical I’ve written), while still in college. I got serious about writing and submitting for publication in 1996 when I was one of the charter members of our new local Romance Writers of America chapter, Music City Romance Writers. I’ve written contemporary romance, romantic suspense, women’s fiction, and young adult novels.

During my journey to publication, I finaled in RWA’s top award for unpublished manuscripts, the Golden Heart, eight times. I was fortunate enough to win the Golden Heart twice – in 2004 in Romantic Suspense and in 2007 for Young Adult. On July 24, 2007, I finally got “The Call” and sold my first two books, young adult titles, to Razorbill, a part of Penguin Young Readers Group. On Oct. 26, 2007, I was thrilled to sell two romances to Harlequin American.

My home since my husband got out of graduate school has been in Tennessee, but I love to take road trips to the beach when it’s cold or places like Yellowstone National Park when it’s hot here in the South. I love to hike, am a total National Park junkie, and am a big sci-fi/fantasy/paranormal fan. I indulge my geekitude at fan conventions like Dragon*Con and at the Salute to Supernatural con, below.

With the stars of Supernatural, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles.