Tricia Mills

So, today's posts are dedicated to Tricia Mills!

Author's Profile:

"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 Wet Noodle Posse, the Romance Bandits, Music City Romance Writers and Georgia Romance Writers.

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.

My office, though the honking big monitor has now been
replaced with a lovely flatscreen.

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During my journey to publication, I finaled in RWA’s top award for unpublished manuscripts, the Golden Heart, eight times.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. 

I sign my first book contract, an event more than a decade in the making!

My home since my dear hubby 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, am quite proud of my ability to spoil my two beautiful nieces and two adorable nephews, and am convinced Buffy and Angel will find their own happily ever after someday."

Tricia Mills Books:

Title and Author: Heartbreak River

Publisher: Razorlbill

Publication Date: April 16th, 2009

Paperback/Hardcover:256

Genre: Young Adult

  

Hailey Abbott's Summer Boys takes a weepy turn in this story of one girl's attempt to tell her childhood friend how she really feels about him.
Alex thought she'd be spending the summer focused on her family's rafting business, burying the memories of her father's death last year, and leaving behind all the messes she made in its wake.
But when Sean returns to town, she is forced to reckon with her mixed-up crushy feelings for him - more powerful than ever before. It takes another tragedy to make Alex realize Sean has loved her, and forgiven her, all along.

 

Title and Author: Winter Longing

Publisher: Razorlbill

Publication Date: August 12th, 2010

Paperback/Hardcover: 272

Genre: Young Adult

When Winter's boyfriend is killed in a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness, she's robbed of the future she’'d only just allowed herself to believe might be hers. Winter and Spencer had been destined for one another. And after his death, Spencer's presence continues to haunt her.

But when her next-door neighbor becomes an unlikely friend, Winter begins to accept all that she can't change. Can she open herself to a new future . . . and a possible new love?

You can find Tricia at:

Official Website