Thank you so much for visiting the Gwendolyn Casey website. I created it to give all my fans access to the latest info concerning my books and upcoming releases. I know each of us has our preferred social sites but I simply can’t keep up with them all. And I don’t want to 😉. Instead, I will be making this website the primary source for all my fans with Facebook and Twitter being secondary.

Unfortunately, I am not able to write as quickly as some of my other sisters (and brothers) in the romance world. But I appreciate my fans waiting patiently for my work and I hope one day that my writing can support me completely. Until then, I am proud to be a working mother who kicks ass by day and writes (or reads) the night away.

Biography:

I was born in Illinois but moved to Iowa when I was eleven. For all the farm jokes about Iowa and its complete lack of professional teams, it is a great place to live. Iowans are genuinely friendly and don’t take themselves too seriously. Traffic jams are rare, cost of living is low and it is home to some wonderful stories.

Growing up, I watched a lot of movies. Cinderella, Grease, Cry Baby, Romeo & Juliet, Moulin Rouge are just a few of my favs. It’s not hard to notice a certain theme. And I had a huge imagination. So much so that I was a bit of a loner, preferring to play by myself than with others.

I did not like to read as a child and standardized testing would put me in special reading courses throughout grade school. It wasn’t until Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I finally found something I wanted to read. The romance between Angel and Buffy had me reading every book in the brand. Once I finished all of those, I would scour Amazon for new books and then go to the bookstore to find them. One day those searches led me to the romance section.

I remember being embarrassed just standing in the aisle.   I stood there staring at the entire row of Nora Roberts novels while I debated purchasing a full-blown romance novel. I mean, romance novels were silly and for old ladies without lives, not a sixteen-year old. Right? I obviously bought the book despite my delusion that everyone was judging me. Of course, that was just the gateway. Eventually, my embarrassment faded and I made it a habit of sitting in the middle of the romance aisle while I collected my stack.

Around that time, I found myself wanting to re-write some of the novels. Have you ever read the description on a book and thought, “ooh, this is going to be so good.” But when you finished, you were disappointed because it didn’t play out how it did in your head. So, my mind started creating stories based on my disappointments. I didn’t write them down in the beginning because I never thought of myself as a writer.   When I was in high school, I got a B on a short story in creative writing. But the teacher had written a note on the front page stating, “This would have been an A if the grammar wasn’t so bad.” Regardless of the bad grammar, she recommended me for the advanced writing class.

I attended the University of Iowa for their infamous writing program. However, the university did not appreciate genre fiction so I can’t say the workshops were a great influence. However, with my English major came a lot of literature courses which did serve as great inspirations. Shakespeare, Chaucer, Lawrence, Shelley, and Dickens were just a few of the fiction authors that have helped me in my creative journey.

I have been working in the insurance industry since I graduated college which is not unusual in Iowa. Insurance and finance are the big industries in Des Moines. I have been writing romance since high school but I couldn’t seem to finish a story. I had a bunch of beginnings, some middles, and no ending. It wasn’t until my son was born in 2015 that I finally finished a complete novel. It is hard to explain but it’s like his arrival in the world made it easier to write. I suddenly wasn’t intimidated by character development or word counts any more.

Having Reign Over Me published has been a real honor and I love knowing that there are people who enjoy my stories.

I will admit that I still have loner tendencies so my social media presence is limited and I will never be a blogger. But I do encourage fans to contact me and I will always try to respond.

THANK YOU ALL