Nan Ryan is an award-winning historical romance author. The daughter of a Texas rancher, she began writing in 1981, inspired by a "Newsweek "article about women who traded corporate careers for the craft of romantic fiction. She found success with her second novel, "Kathleen's Surrender" (1983), a story of a Southern belle's passionate affair with a mysterious gambler. Ryan continued writing romances, publishing novels such as "Silken Bondage" (1989), "The Scandalous Miss Howard "(2002), and "The Countess Misbehaves" (2000). Her husband, Joe Ryan, is a television executive, and his career has taken them all over the country, with each new town providing fodder for Ryan's stories.