Hi! and welcome to my website. I’m Jacqueline Rhoades, also known as Jackie to my friends. I can’t tell you how delighted I am you’re reading this and as this page is titled ‘About Me’, let me tell you a little about myself.
I was born in Connecticut, and grew up in a little Cape Cod house a few blocks from the beach. I learned to read when I was three or four. I have no memory of the event and my parents give conflicting reports. At any rate, once I learned, I couldn’t stop. I was fortunate that my parents never restricted my reading material to ‘age appropriate’ works. After reading the classics, biographies, a great deal of non-fiction, ‘important fiction’ and every best seller on the market, I was in danger of becoming a literary snob. Romances? Never!
One day in abject desperation for something to read,(real readers know the symptoms are similar to withdrawal) I finally picked up a romance my kindly neighbor mistakenly (my snooty nose in the air here) gave me to read. Hey! It was a blizzard and I was desperate. I read that romance and loved it. One romance and I was hooked!
That book was well written and entertaining. It wasn’t the trashy drivel I’d been led to expect. Okay, it was a little trashy, but that was part of its charm. That one book opened a whole new reading world for me and introduced me to other ‘second rate’ fiction that wasn’t second rate at all. I started reading fantasy and sci-fi, erotica and yes, eventually paranormal romance. I love this stuff!
I still like to read a variety of genres, but like old and faithful friends, romance books are always there waiting for me to lose interest in my new friends and return to the tried and true.
Time passed. I married a wonderful man and graduated college with a degree in Biology. I must have skipped the classes on human reproduction (or read romances during the lectures) because five children followed in quick succession.
Work, husband, kids and the country life we chose to lead took up my days. Still, I found time to read, usually in the middle of the night, and when I couldn’t read – someone had to chase after those kids! – I made up stories in my head and actually found time to write my first book which will remain forever hidden under the piles of junk that surround my desk. Fast forward through the years and I finally found the time to write another.
Guardian’s Grace was supposed to be a single book, but toward the end of the story there was this terrified woman looking through a window and I had to know who she was. It was Hope and as soon as I met her, I knew she couldn’t belong to anyone but Nico and Guardian’s Hope was born. Okay, two books would work, but there was this cop who recognized what the Daughters of Man were. How? Who is she? And JJ came to life in my mind. Thus Guardian’s Joy was born.
There are other women lurking in my mind, all different and all waiting in line for their stories to be told. Sometimes they argue about who should be next.
With all these voices in my head, I’m either insane or I have a lot of stories to write. My husband laughs and says the jury’s still out. So, I guess I’ll keep on writing until they come to take me away.
Writing, for me, is an adventure. I go where my characters take me and I hope you’ll continue to join me on my journey to see where all this leads.
Thanks for stopping by,
Jackie
