Contemporary romance novelist Deborah Smith is a former newspaper editor. She writes under her own name as well as under the pseudonyms Jackie Leigh and Jacqueline Lennox. She has written around forty novels indcluding A Place to Call Home and When Venus Fell, which both received awards from Romantic Times magazine. She also won a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times magazine. She is a founding partner of BelleBooks, which is a small southern press known for feel good southern fiction including the Mossy Creek Hometown series and the Sweet Tea story collections.