For the Love of Mike

Muriel Jensen always wanted to be a writer. She grew up in an industrial town in southeastern Massachusetts populated with wonderful and interesting people. They fill her head now as she creates characters for romance novels. Her family moved to Los Angeles when she was ten. Muriel went right to work after high school, first for Pacific Telephone then, as the need to write became stronger, she joined the secretarial pool at the Los Angeles Times while taking a correspondence course in fiction writing. She met her husband-to-be, Ron, at the Xerox machine. (There were two copiers in a nine-story building. That tells you how long ago it was.) They married in 1968. In the first few years of their marriage, Ron edited several small newspapers that were always understaffed. Muriel sometimes helped out as a reporter and soon learned that journalism was not for her—editors got really upset when you made up stuff. Muriel decided to stick with fiction. She and her husband adopted three children in 1973 after moving to Oregon. Suddenly she had many new priorities, but she couldn’t shake the need to write down the scenarios in her head. She worked on them at night while the children watched television. In early 1983, word was out that Harlequin was opening a New York office and looking for manuscripts about American women written by American authors. Muriel was managing a bookstore at the time and had written an entire novel between customers during a long, rainy winter. She buffed it up and sent it in. That was the beginning of her romance writing career. Today, she has three adult children, a growing army of grandchildren, four cats and a Labrador retriever–mix named Amber. About ten years ago, Ron went back to school to work on a degree in fine art. He built a studio in their basement and supplies two galleries with his work. They live in an old Victorian home on a hill overlooking the Columbia River. Every day Muriel watches freighters, Coast Guard cutters, yachts, and fishing boats come and go and speculates about the relationships of those aboard, and those they’ve left behind. She says it always inspires her. Muriel has sold more than 70 books and novellas, and has had such a great time it’s almost embarrassing.