With the upcoming publication of my ninth book and the creation of my new pseudonym, Patricia Lewin, I figured it was time I had a Web Site.  I spent hours surfing the web looking for graphics and checking out other author sites. Finally, I settled on a wonderful web designer, who's also a writer, and this is what we came up with. Isn't it fantastic!  I had a great time, and it was a nice distraction when the writer in me was being stubbornly quiet.

So, tell me what you think?

I plan to use this site as an easy way to keep in touch with current fans and make new ones. So, I'm open to suggestions on how to make it better.  Feel free to email me your thoughts.

Meanwhile, let me tell you a little about myself.

First of all, my background is computers. I have a degree in Computer Science and spent twelve years with Big Blue (i.e. IBM, for the uninitiated). So how did someone from the techie world end up writing fiction? Well, that's a good question.

My first love has always been books. I started reading everything I could get my hands on as far back as grade school and wanted to rewrite stories my own way, either changing the endings or creating new adventures for the characters. However, I didn't actually start writing until high school. My first attempt was a serial story about a cowboy who was a cross between Cat Balou and Jesse James - the fictional character not the real outlaw. I'd write a chapter and pass it around to my friends, then write another. I never finished that story, which is probably a good thing. It was pretty bad.

By college I'd graduated from writing westerns to science fiction short stories that bore a strong resemblance to Star Trek. Are you seeing a pattern here?  LOL!  I like to think that all those "takeoff" stories were just practice for the real thing.

Funny thing though, during all that time, it never occurred to me that I could write for a living. In college, I didn't even consider majoring in Journalism or English. In my mind, I needed a technical degree to be self-sufficient. So, it wasn't until I'd been working for IBM about seven years that the writing bug bit again. I attended a writer's conference in Orlando and met dozens of people writing all different types of fiction and nonfiction. That weekend changed my life.

After that, it took me five years and writing three complete manuscripts before I sold my first book, Keeping Katie, to Harlequin. That was over seven years ago--June 9, 1993 to be exact--and the book came out in April of the following year. I left IBM on March 30th of the same year, and as they say, the rest is history.  I've been writing full time ever since.