Carolynn Carey

Carolynn Carey has had a lifelong love affair with the written word. She started (and quickly abandoned) her first novel in elementary school. In high school she was editor of the school paper and worked after school for the newspaper published weekly in the rural county in Middle Tennessee where she grew up. Later, in college, she majored in journalism and again worked on the school newspaper. Her career didn't deviate much from her earliest love: She has been an academic editor for her entire working life. Fiction writing had always been a dream for Carolynn, one that stayed a bit out of reach until she decided to become serious about learning the craft. Joining the Romance Writers of America (RWA®) and then the Smoky Mountain Romance Writers chapter of RWA® provided the encouragement and assistance she needed. In the last few years, she has finaled three times in RWA's prestigious Golden Heart contest for unpublished writers, and in 2004 she won her own chapter's Laurie in the short contemporary unpublished category. Later that year, her winning manuscript sold to Avalon Books and was published as A Summer Sentence in 2005. A sequel, Falling for DallasCarolynn lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with her husband, who has been of incredible encouragement over the years by always believing in her. They have one daughter, also a lover of the written word, who teaches English in North Carolina.