Gem is a biologist by training and an artist by heart. She’s spent her career studying fish, birds, bugs and many other critters, all providing a colorful tapestry for her stories. She writes contemporary romances with varying degrees of heat, but the common thread is a natural setting or a scientific twist.

Her first love was painting and came to writing romances only recently. “The similarities in the process amaze me. When I write, I lay down a background wash first and gradually add form and structure, just like I would with a blank canvas. The last step is adding nuance and balance. There’s nothing more satisfying than a finished manuscript and a finished painting.”

She makes her home in Minnesota with her husband and daughter and a pile of cats and dogs and horses. When she’s not writing or attending assorted youth sporting events, she’s painting, on canvas or digitally.