Mary Balogh grew up in post-war Wales as Mary Jenkins. It was in many ways an idyllic childhood even though Swansea, her home town, had been heavily bombed during the war. She had a very good education thanks to parents who emphasised the importance of school and career at a time when many people were still saying that education was wasted on girls.

Mary was fortunate to be young at a time when there was employment in almost any field. She wanted to teach and travel, and moved to Kipling, Saskatchewan, Canada, on a two-year teaching contract. At the end of the first year she had a blind date with a man named Robert Balogh, a tall, sharply dressed, blue-eyed Adonis she found standing in her landlady's kitchen. They were married a little over a year later.

Wanting to be an author was a dream and Mary knew that if she ever wrote, it was that romantic world of Regency England that she most wanted to recreate. And so A Masked Deception was written in longhand at the kitchen table while home and family functioned around her after the supper dishes were done. Finally, at the end of 1983, three months after she had started it, the manuscript was ready to be submitted. But where? And how?

Mary knew nothing about the publishing world and nothing about any writers' organisations. She picked out the publisher she thought did the best job of Regencies, found a Canadian address inside the cover of one of the books, and sent her manuscript there with a brief covering letter. The address turned out to be a distribution centre! But incredibly someone there read the manuscript, liked, it, wrote to Mary and sent it on to New York. Two weeks later she received a call, offering a two-book contract.

And so the dream became reality. A Masked Deception was published in 1985 and Mary won the Romantic Times Award for best new Regency writer that year. Finally, in 1988, she was able to retire from teaching after twenty years in order to devote time to her dream career. And as the children grew up and left home and empty bedrooms behind them, Mary was able to set up a study and surround herself with all of her books and finest treasures. Please visit Mary at her website above.