About Fran

The first thing I ever wrote was a fourth-grade play about Spanish settlers coming to Florida. As a native of Pittsburgh, I never imagined I’d someday make the Sunshine State my home. But fate—and my husband—had other plans.

Today I live on an island along the Gulf of Mexico. We don’t have high-rise condos or crowded beaches, so we’ve managed to avoid becoming a major tourist destination, although plenty of snowbirds find their way here every winter. It’s the kind of place where stories seem to drift in on the tide.

After a few false starts and detours, I finally published my first novel in 2016. Drawing on experiences from my time as editor of our local newspaper, that book eventually grew into my Calusa Town Tales series.

My second series, Just Desserts, revolves around one of my favorite subjects: dessert. Each of the five standalone novels features a different sweet treat at the center of the story—because romance and dessert are both better when layered.

Music has also shaped much of my life. Over the years, I’ve sung with community and college choruses, experiences that inspired Making Time with the Maestro. My current musical genre is barbershop, and it lent itself to A Cappella Christmas: A Clean Mistletoe Kisses Romance.

Then there’s Yuletide with the Rookie. Every romance author needs a holiday story, right? I couldn't stop at just one. Embracing Christmas: A Sweet Workplace Romance features a woman who learns to love Christmas.

Being a lifelong Steelers fan from Pittsburgh, it was probably inevitable that football would eventually find its way into my fiction. Combined with my years working in academia, that inspiration became Climbing Ivy Covered Walls, where football and campus politics collide.

I’ve long been fascinated by astrology, numerology, feng shui, and other mystical traditions, so naturally I created an entire town filled with people who embrace those arts in Serendipity.

A close friend of my late husband lived in a charming California beach town we visited many times over the years. That community loosely inspired San Silvestro, the setting for Brokering Love.

And because I’ve always loved opposites-attract romances, I leaned fully into that dynamic in my novel, The Movie Star’s Bottom Line. 

No matter the setting, all of my books share one important promise: a happily ever after.

I hope you enjoy spending time in the worlds I’ve created.