When a small child, my family moved from Rockford, Illinois to Vero Beach, Florida. I now reside in Orlando, Florida, near my children and grandchildren. Throughout my life, I have always been an avid and passionate reader of history and historical fiction. My favorite authors are Thomas Hardy, Edward Rutherfurd, James Mitchner, Diana Gabaldon, and Daphne du Mauier, all sparking a lifelong love of lives in the past. After retiring from a career in real estate and as a small business owner, I delved into the considerable cache of family documents passed down through several generations. Among the records belonging to my great-great-grandmother, Lydia van Rensselaer Everett, were bonds issued to find missing heirs of the Lawrence-Townley Estate in Lancashire, England. The discovery led me on a decade-long adventure piecing together family legacy across four centuries. Inspired by the twists and turns of examining the past on both sides of the Atlantic, and fascinated by historical research, I began writing The Destiny Chronicles, my own five-book, historical series that follows the fictional Endicott family for nearly a century, from the 1830s through the Great War.