Click on the image to view full-size.

Early careers included performing in live theater, managing a cosmetics store, and modeling at the Dallas Apparel Mart. Appearing in television commericals led to other jobs in television--weathercasting and feature reporting on the nationally syndicated "PM Magazine."

Being dismissed from that part-time job was a blessing in disguise because it prompted her to do what she'd always said she would like to do--full time fiction writing.

Taking the advice of a published writer who had appeared on Michael Brown's morning TV talk show, Sandra attended a writers' conference at the University of Houston where she met authors, literary agents, and publishers. She was exposed to a whole new world. Inspired by the ideas exchanged at the conference, she tried her hand at writing for the lucrative romance market.

Brown sold her first two books within thirteen days of each other. Love's Encore and Love Beyond Reason were published in 1981.

Soon other publishers were soliciting manuscripts. Brown was prolific, writing up to six books a year under several names. "It was as though all the lights came on, and I realized what I was supposed to do with my life. I was writing like a fiend."

She worked during the day while her children Rachel and Ryan (from whom she borrowed her first pen name) were in school. "At three-thirty every afternoon, I switched from professional writer to Mom, driving someone to ballet, someone else to soccer, taking one to the orthodontist and the other to church choir." She claims to have edited many a chapter in the front seat of her car, and once plotted a book during a school field trip--to the Barnum & Bailey Circus.

In 1987 Brown decided to move away from bonafide romances into the mainstream fiction market. The gamble paid off in 1990 when Mirror Image made The New York Times bestseller list. Since then, all her novels have been Times bestsellers, including reprints of the early romances, bringing the total to forty-four. In 1992 French Silk was made into an ABC-TV movie.

For five consecutive years she received awards from Waldenbooks for having the bestselling contemporary series romance. She was given two similar awards from B.Dalton. In 1992 the American Business Women's Association honored her with a Distinguished Circle of Success. She served as keynote speaker at Romance Writers of America's annual convention in 1985, and in 1998 that organization recognized her with their Lifetime Achievement Award. Other organizations of which she is a member include Mystery Writers of America, Novelists, Inc., and The Author's Guild.

Presently Brown limits herself to one novel a year, but "...it's no picnic." Her books now require much more character/plot development and research, which consume a great number of those 365 days. The rest are taken up with publicity tours and public speaking.

"And I also try to have a life," Brown laughs.

She and Michael, who owns a video production company, love to travel. "Aside from books and movies, that's probably our favorite pastime." Although her children are now adults pursuing their own careers, the family spends as much time together as schedules permit, often meeting at their vacation house on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, or enjoying their home in Texas, which they share with pet longhorn steers Boudreaux, named after the hero of Slow Heat in Heaven, Bowie, and Bubba, her twenty-seventh wedding anniversary gift from Michael.