Couch World
by Cathy Yardley

I woke up having no idea where I was. It's a familiar feeling. If I did know where I was. . .then I think I'd be worried. P.J.'s life is simple. Wake up at 2:00 p.m. In someone else's place, on someone else's couch. Shower. Clothes. Club. P.J.'s a punter--someone who fills in if a Didn't able to make a gig. San Francisco is a hotbed of glam bands and alternative rock, and P.J.'s into all of it--she's been living the urban Bedouin lifestyle for almost a year now, saving money to create the blow-out, off-the-hook demo of the music she loves, the music for which she deliberately abandoned "normal." Ever wondered what it would be like to pack it all in and live the carefree life--no 9 to 5, no daily grind, no routine, no one to check in with? P.J. knows how it's done. The most important element? Lots of friends, with couches. One night it's Cecil's high-end settee, the next it's Sticky's lumpy sofa. P.J.'s even got smarmy Samantha to make sure there's always a hideaway bed from hell in the wings. But when a reporter infiltrates her life, then acts as if she wants to make it her own, P.J. senses real trouble. Could this spell the end of couch world?

Cathy Yardley's Bio

When I was still in high school, I wasn't allowed to bring romance novels into the house, much less read them," Cathy Yardley remembers with a smile. "My family was pretty strict, and very focused on scholastics. The only romances I got to read were Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë. So when I went away to college, and my best friend had a closet full of them, I binged." That small rebellion turned into a writing career with the publication of her first novel, "The Cinderella Solution", published by Harlequin Duets. Cathy Yardley's writing career has been "a complete surprise." After graduating from University of California, Berkeley with a double major in Mass Communications and Art History, she had originally planned on trying to be a publicist for other romance authors. She joined the Los Angeles Chapter of the Romance Writers of America in 1995. When she won first place in the Romantic Suspense category of their annual writing contest, she "took my writing more seriously." The result was her first sale.

"I'd written a term paper at Berkeley about the feminist themes in romance fiction," she remembers. "Now I get to put those ideas into practice. I love writing about strong heroines and heroes, and about the realities and rewards of falling in love." She explores these themes in her latest book, "The Driven Snowe", a November 2001 release from Harlequin's super-sexy new line, Blaze.

Currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area, the 20-something writer is working as a budget analyst at a major healthcare organization and working on a women's fiction project for the new Red Dress Ink imprint. Titled "L.A. Woman", it will be released next summer.