Although Melinda has lived in Georgia and Texas, she's a California girl at heart. Her earliest memories are of life on an isolated 50-acre sheep ranch in rural Sonoma County, California. Picture rolling hills covered in brown grass, a eucalyptus forest, a long gravel driveway lined with plump sheep and no sidewalks. It was a big deal to drive into town on a one-lane road in a ramshackle, bubble-fendered pickup for an ice cream.

Flash forward to this century.

Melinda lives in the California's hot central valley with her husband - her basketball playing college sweetheart. With three kids the couple has done the soccer thing, the karate thing, the dance thing, the Little League thing and, of course, the basketball thing.

While working toward writing paying a full-time salary (hey, she can dream, can't she?), Melinda runs a successful marketing consulting business, juggles the demands of family and "things", arranges sleeping pillows for two cats and allows two big Labs to believe they are protecting her when someone knocks on the door.

Melinda loves writing romances about women who don't realize how strong they are until a hero comes along to show them, while capturing the wry humorous power struggle of falling in love (because, really, who lets the man have the last word?).