Brenda Mott

Though Brenda Mott grew up in a suburb of Denver in an apartment complex, she's always had a great love of the outdoors and horses. Having family members on the eastern plains of Colorado who owned farmland and had access to horses allowed her to finally learn to ride at the age of 14.

She soon became interested in junior rodeo and received her first horse  a beautiful palomino quarter horse mare that she named Starfire  at the age of 16. Mott trained the mare herself for rodeo events such as barrel racing and pole bending, and she went on to compete in rodeos and gymkhanas for a number of years. As an adult she moved to the country and has lived on a small farm or ranch (for the most part) ever since.

In the early '80s Mott combined her love of horses and writing, and she began penning nonfiction articles for Horse & Rider magazine and its sister publications. She also wrote numerous short stories in the horror genre under a pseudonym and had a few of them published in pulp magazines.

A short time later she tried her hand at writing romance fiction. After working hard on over a dozen manuscripts and receiving enough rejection slips to wallpaper a house, she finally got "The Call" from Paula Eykelhof, then Senior Editor for the Harlequin Superromance line. (Ms. Eykelhof has since been promoted.)

"I was stunned. I'd waited 15 years to get that call. I still pinch myself, ecstatic that my dream has finally come true."

A Colorado native, Mott left her home state in the spring of 2002 due to the rising cost of land there and because of the massive development going on in Colorado.