GIBSON, Rachel

PERSONAL:

Born in Boise, ID; married; children: three.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Boise, ID. Home and office—P.O. Box 4124, Boise, ID 83711-4124.

CAREER:

Author.

AWARDS, HONORS:

RITA Award, Romance Writer's of America, 2002, for True Confessions.

WRITINGS:

Simply Irresistible (romance fiction), Avon Books (New York, NY), 1998.

Truly Madly Yours (romance fiction), Avon Books (New York, NY), 1999

It Must Be Love (romance fiction), Avon Books (New York, NY), 2000.

True Confessions (romance fiction), Avon Books (New York, NY), 2001.

Lola Carlyle Reveals All (romance fiction), Avon Books (New York, NY), 2002.

See Jane Score (romance fiction), Avon Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Daisy's Back in Town (romance fiction), Avon Books (New York, NY), 2004.

The Trouble with Valentine's Day (romance fiction), Avon Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Sex, Lies, and Online Dating (romance fiction), Avon Books (New York, NY), 2006.

I'm in No Mood for Love (romance fiction), Avon Books (New York, NY), 2006.

Also author of novella Now and Forever, published in the anthology Secrets of a Perfect Night, Avon Books (New York, NY), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS:

Becoming a writer was the furthest thing from Rachel Gibson's mind while she was growing up in Boise, Idaho. Gibson suffered from dyslexia, a condition that made reading a constant struggle. It wasn't until her twenties that she learned to enjoy reading the classics, and then she fell in love with the romance genre after a friend loaned her Shirley Busbee's The Spanish Rose. Frustration with the outcome of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind led Gibson to pull out an old typewriter and rewrite the book's ending. Compelled to write contemporary fiction, Gibson later talked about her writing process in an interview on her official Web site: "For me, it's like pushing a refrigerator up a mountain. Once I finally get to the top, I tell myself that I'm glad it's over, and that I don't ever want to do it again. It is too hard and too draining. But even as I say that to myself, I look down and see more refrigerators at the bottom of the mountain, and I am compelled to go down to the bottom and push them up. I don't really have a choice. It's just something I have to do. Like a lemming jumping into the sea."

It took Gibson six years, four full manuscripts, and twenty-eight rejection letters before her first novel, Simply Irresistible, was published. Having released approximately one book a year since then, Gibson has garnered both critical praise and a strong fan base. Many of her books feature recurring characters, or secondary characters who are brought into the forefront in a subsequent book. Her fiction features such eclectic heroes as ex-professional hockey players, supermodels, private investigators, and romance writers. Nearly all of Gibson's novels have been named to top ten lists, including those for the Romance Writers of America, the Oakland Press, Waldenbooks, Amazon.com, and USA Today, and several received starred reviews by Publishers Weekly.

Karen Lynch, a reviewer for the Romance Reader Web site, wrote in her assessment of True Confessions: "Rachel Gibson is on my short list of authors whose books I grab the moment they appear on the shelves. There's something about her style of writing that appeals to me. Everything seems real: the quirky heroines and delicious heroes, the snappy dialogue and hot love scenes written without a single flowery phrase." All about Romance contributor Jennifer Schendel commented in a review for See Jane Score that Gibson "has a voice that balances humor with deeper emotions to perfection and knows how to tell a story that'll both move a reader and make them laugh out loud." Another All about Romance reviewer, Lea Hensley, remarked: "Rachel Gibson is one author I can rely on to hit the right blend of humor, characterization, and sexiness with pure class."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 2005, Shelley Mosley, review of The Trouble with Valentine's Day, p. 830.

ONLINE

All about Romance,http://www.likesbooks.com/ (September 26, 2006), Lea Hensley, review of Sex, Lies, and Online Dating; Jennifer Schendel, review of See Jane Score.

Rachel Gibson Home Page,http://www.rachelgibson.com (September 26, 2006).

Romance Reader,http://www.theromancereader.com/ (September 26, 2006), Karen Lynch, review of True Confessions. *