March Into Romance: New Releases to Fall in Love With!
Elizabeth Batten-Carew
Elizabeth has been a romance writer for over ten years. She
lives in Ottawa, Ontario in Canada with her husband, two
sons and four cats. Her oldest son is in his early teens,
so the house is constantly bustling with teenagers --
playing video games, on the computers, playing MAGIC cards,
or horsing around.
In her previous professional life, she was a computer
software professional. After graduating from the University
of Waterloo with a Mathematics degree specializing in
Computer Science, she worked for 15 years in the high tech.
field before becoming a stay-at-home mom. Over the next few
years, she continued to do the odd consulting contract to
bring in extra dollars and to keep her knowledge up-to-date.
Her first reading passion was science fiction. Her dad and
older brother were avid SF fans and between them they'd
collected hundreds of SF books, which she started reading
before she hit her teens. When she discovered "The Hobbit",
she turned onto fantasy, too. (Her husband is also a big SF
fan. When they got married, they combined their book
collections and they've been carting around 20 boxes of SF
and fantasy books ever since.)
The first romances she read, in her late teens, were
historical romances her mother passed on to her. She loved
the romance aspect, but wasn't much of a history buff, so
didn't continue reading them for long. When she picked up
her first contemporary romance after having her first baby
(she needed something to do during those middle-of-the-
night feedings!) she loved them! That's all she read for
years.
Think of her delight when she found there were actually
books that combined her reading passions. Romance set in
the far future. Contemporary romance with a twist. Fantasy
romance. Finally, something she was truly passionate about.
Now she writes futuristic romance, fantasy romance,
contemporary romance with wizards, or genies, or alternate
realities, or alien abductions, or... pretty well anything
a
little different. Sometimes, even straight contemporary
romance. She writes romances in every length, from short
stories to long novels, but mostly tends to mid-sized
novels and novellas.