Dawn Atkins (1)

Dawn Atkins knew she wanted to be an author since she put fat pencil to blue-lined paper. Though she always wanted to be an author, she wasn't sure she had the "stuff" to be published. She graduated from college with a teaching degree and taught elementary school—second and third grades (the best).She met her husband, David, in 1980. They married in 1985, taking their Hobie catamaran to San Diego for their honeymoon.

Dawn began freelance feature writing for newspapers and magazines, local and national. She published two stories in True Love magazine in the early '80s. Getting brave, she wrote a sexy romance, which was promptly rejected. Eventually she left teaching and freelancing for full-time public relations jobs. Busy with career changes, marriage and having a child, she set aside her plans to write novels until 1996, when she dug out that rejected book and rewrote it. Two years later, she sold the first of two short romantic comedies to Kensington Publishing. Then in 2000 she began her career writing sensual and funny romances for several Harlequin lines—Temptation, Duets, Flipside and Blaze—which she now calls home, adding a dash of suspense to her latest releases. In 2006, she left her day job to write full-time and hasn't looked back. She's won the Golden Quill for Best Sexy Romance and has been a several-times Romantic Times Reviewers Choice finalist for Best Blaze (twice) and Best Flipside, as well as a finalist for the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for "Best Love and Laughter."

Dawn lives in the Phoenix area with her husband and son and their butterscotch-and-white cat, whom they adopted when they realized the dog they wanted was really a cat. Her hobbies include sailing, scuba diving, playing the piano (badly) and Zumba, her current obsession.