V.K. Sykes

Pseudonym for Vanessa Kelly.

V.K. is a wife/husband writing team—Vanessa Kelly and Randall Sykes—who write romantic suspense and single title contemporary romance. When Vanessa's not writing as V.K., she slips into a telephone booth and emerges as Vanessa Kelly, author of sizzling hot Regency romance novels for Kensington Publishing. Her latest novel, His Mistletoe Bride, hit the shelves in October 2012. You can check out Vanessa's books and other fun stuff at www.vanessakellyauthor.com.

Vanessa was born a Jersey girl, but not in Tony Soprano country. Rather, she grew up in a gorgeous little colonial town just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. After completing her Master's in English literature from Rutgers University, Vanessa headed to Toronto for her Ph.D. and stayed in the frozen north. Eventually, she found her way into the public sector, and spent many years writing reports and briefs.

Randy started out as a prairie boy, with a heritage in the starkly beautiful wheat fields of southern Saskatchewan, Canada. As a graduate student in economics, he migrated east to prestigious McGill University. After completing his Master's in labor economics, he ended up working in the public sector in the nation's capital of Ottawa. Writing endless reports and speeches honed his writing skills, but too often bored him senseless. When he finally turned his pen (or rather his keyboard) to fiction, life changed in a hurry. His "I can do this!" quickly became "Holy cow, this is hard!" And before he knew it, he was immersed in a strange land of romance fiction writers, almost all women, learning why books require such things as emotion and conflict to get readers to actually pay money to read them.

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