During her senior year
at Harvard College, Julia Quinn (better known in cyberspace as JulieQ)
realized
that she didn't know what
she wanted to do with her life. This depressed her. In fact,
the only thing that saved her sanity during this dark, dreary
time
was the fact that none of her friends knew, either. So she
sat down with a big tub of Ben & Jerry's and a good book
and decided to figure out what to do.
Getting a job seemed too difficult.
She
wouldn't mind HAVING a job, but she certainly didn't know how
to get one.
Law school seemed too annoying. Everyone
hated lawyers, and Julie liked to be liked.
Business school
was not an option. They only took people who had been in
the work force for at least two years, and,
as
noted above,
Julie didn't know how to get a job.
The only option left
(this shows you how narrow her world-view was) was medical
school. "Aha!" she thought. "I
could be a good doctor." She quickly picked up the
phone and ran this idea past her parents, who were understandably
baffled,
since her degree was in Art History, but being the cool
people they are, they said, "Great!"
Julie hung up the phone, blinked a couple
of times, and said aloud, "Okay, so I'm going to be a doctor.
Cool." Then
she pulled out a pad of paper and proceeded to figure out how
long this would take. (Note: careers in medicine are not for
those who crave instant gratification.) It turned out that
it would be over two years before she could even ENTER medical
school since she had to take all those pesky science classes
in order to apply. Clearly, she needed to find something to
do during that time, since she knew from experience that she
probably wouldn't be studying as much as she ought.
That's when
she looked at the book next to the tub of now-empty Ben & Jerry's.
It was a romance. "I could write one
of those," she thought.
And so she did.
Two years later, just
as Julie was deciding between Yale School of Medicine and Columbia
College
of Physicians & Surgeons,
her agent called to tell her that her first two books, Splendid and Dancing at Midnight, were the subject of
a fierce bidding war between two publishing houses.
So she put off medical school
for a year and wrote Minx.
Then she put off medical school for another year and wrote Everything And The Moon. Then she got a little
nervous and thought that maybe she ought to give med school
a try and so she picked
up a scalpel, started dissecting cadavers, and learned more
about the citric acid cycle than anyone (including most med
students) wants to know.
A few months later, however, she realized
that she must have experienced a bout of temporary insanity and
she withdrew from
medical school and wrote Brighter Than The Sun. This was followed
by To Catch An Heiress and
the critically acclaimed How To Marry a Marquis.
Julie's writing has quickly earned a reputation
for warmth and humor, and her dialogue is considered among the
best in the industry. She has been profiled in TIME Magazine (a rarity among romance writers) and has even competed on the game show The Weakest Link. (To find out if she won, click here.)
Each year brings more accolades; in 2001
she was a double finalist in the Romance Writers of America (RWA)'s
prestigious RITA Awards (for The Duke And I and The Viscount Who Loved Me), and later that year she made her debut
on the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller list with An Offer From a Gentleman. 2002 saw the release of the
much-anticipated Romancing Mister Bridgerton, which was voted one of the Top
Ten books of the year by the membership of RWA and was a finalist
for the RITA Awards in the category of long historical. To Sir Phillip, With Love received
a rare starred review in Publishers Weekly, the trade
magazine of the publishing industry, and was later named by that
publication as one of the six best mass market original novels
of the year. The popularity of the Bridgerton series continued to rise with 2004's When He Was Wicked, and 2005's It's in His Kiss, both of which debuted near the top of the New York Times list.
In 2006, Julia Quinn released the eighth and final installment in the Bridgerton series: the much awaited On the Way to the Wedding.
Julia Quinn currently lives with her family in the
Pacific Northwest.
If you'd like to read an
essay by Julia Quinn on why it's great to be a romance writer,
click here.
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