Evelyn D'Arcy
Personal Information
Description
Pamela Christine Brooks was born on 11 Febrary 1966 in Essex, England, UK. She always loved books and could read before she went to school. She always knew that she wanted to be a writer, and her parents bought her a proper typewriter for her sixth birthday. (She's still a six-finger typist, though….) Her first stories were all about ponies or outer space, but then she discovered Mills & Boon when she was 12 and decided this was what she wanted to do. Following a degree in English, she started work as an accountant, and hated every second of it! All the clients asked why she wasn't working in PR—so she went into marketing communications for the next 10 years. In between studying for two sets of professional exams, she continued to write short stories and novels. And her husband, Gerard, supported her every step of the way, even buying her first computer for her! When her son, Chris, was born in 1997, she decided to go freelance so she could spend time with her baby. She became a health journalist and copy editor but never lost her love of romance. When she was pregnant with her daughter, her husband suggested combining her two loves by writing medical romances. She started reading them and was instantly hooked. (She claims they were her craving when she was pregnant!) At six weeks old, Chloë spent her first Christmas in the hospital with bronchiolitis. The only way she could cope was to pretend it was happening to someone else—so she started writing A Baby of Her Own in longhand at Chloë's bedside. Her agent liked the first three chapters. So did Mills & Boon. The final manuscript was accepted on Chloë's first birthday, and published on Chloë's second birthday in 2002, under the pseudonym of Kate Hardy. In 2008, her novel Breakfast at Giovanni's won the Love Story of the Year by the Romantic Novelists' Association. She lives just outside Norwich in the east of England with her husband, Gerry, their son and daughter and two mad spaniels. When she isn't writing medical romances or health articles, looking after the children or raising funds for Chris's school and cancer research, Kate enjoys relaxing with the family—going to the beach, playing games, reading stories and watching films. She also loves cooking (but not the dieting that goes with it) and she reads a lot. She'd quite like to try rappelling, parascending and scuba diving, but as she's terribly clumsy, she thinks it's much safer to let her heroines do it for her….
Books
Mirage
First Book in the Mirage Trilogy A gay “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” Mirage is the story of two men on the primitive tribal planet Ki, the impulsive hunter Greeland and his younger partner Enkidu, who have been promised to each other in the ancient ways of the tiny planet for a lifetime. But a brutal murder and the events that unfold after it have made both of them seek asylum on Earth, the planet they will use in the bodies of two lovers, Alan Kostenbaum and Wright Smith, two men whose identities and souls Greeland and Enkidu will occupy and who will be sacrificed to their needs. Mirage combines relentless action, adventure, suspense, and political savvy—published in 1991, during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S., and all the paranoia and hostility around the spread of this “gay disease,” as so many homophobes called it—and the newly open and expressed romantic feelings among gay men. It is a precursor to many gay romantic novels that came after it, that deal with issues of gay fidelity and same-sex marriage, even though it is in the form of a gay science fiction novel. As Enkidu, the young man from the planet Ki learns in the body of Alan Kostenbaum: “As they said here on Earth, money made the world go round. But I knew that only love could change things.” In truth, Mirage is a deeper psychological novel than most science fiction, and its theme of four men occupying two bodies is beautifully realized with all the conflicts and romantic energy natural to this kind of tale. Whether you read Mirage for its exciting plot, or for its candor about gay sexuality or its warm romanticism, you will find that this book more than rewards your time with its intense beauty and mystery.