Cheryl has always loved the exciting and diverse worlds available between the covers of books. As a child Cheryl wrote stories and drew covers, then stapled them into little books. She cut all the tiny book images from the book club advertisements in the Sunday newspaper and glued them to bits of cardboard so Barbie® had a full library.

She was a voracious reader and admits her early passion was for horror and true crime. Eventually she read Victoria Holt and Catherine Cookson, but one fateful day while browsing the book section, she took a chance on a different genre and bought Hummingbird by LaVyrle Spencer, then promptly drove back to the store for The Rainbow Season by Lisa Gregory. She was hooked for life.

And so, when she got serious and decided to write a book, it was, of course, a romance. A very badly written and poorly plotted romance. But eventually she joined Romance Writers of America and her local chapter, Romance Authors of the Heartland, and was fortunate to have the late Diane Wicker Davis as her first mentor.

Nearly fifty books later, Cheryl believes in paying it forward, and some of her most rewarding experiences have been sharing in the successes of writers she has coached over the years.