Valerie Hansen's basic nature is to see the humorous side of life and enjoy every day to the fullest. She's always loved stories about people who have successfully met life's challenges and gone on to find happiness, so writing joyful love stories is a perfect outlet for her.

Her personal life sounds a lot like a romance novel. She married her high school sweetheart and they raised two great kids before leaving California to pursue their dreams of a rural lifestyle in the Arkansas Ozarks. That relocation has also given her work a new, more spiritual focus than ever before.

Valerie had gone to Sunday school as a child and attended church off and on as an adult, but didn't really understand what was missing in her spiritual life until daily problems drove her to seek answers from a closer relationship with Jesus Christ. What a surprise! And what a difference in outlook. In the years that followed, she was continually amazed at the extraordinary opportunities that came her way. She still is.

Valerie has always loved to write. That, and the strong conviction that this is what she was meant to do, led her to Steeple Hill and the Love Inspired series. Besides extensive research, she has plenty of interesting experiences to draw upon when creating stories:

She's been a veterinary assistant, teacher's aide, volunteer fire department dispatcher, Emergency Medical Technician, bank worker, professional artist, store clerk, bookkeeper, 4-H leader, Sunday school teacher, gospel singer/songwriter, winning quiz show contestant, dog trainer, college extension-class instructor, and antique restorer. She's built dulcimers and a psaltery, laid bricks and tile, designed stained-glass windows, roofed a house, decorated store windows for the holidays, helped pour cement, raised fancy guinea pigs and finches, driven a long-haul moving van, and was once the proud owner of 23 Newfoundland dogs at one time. Her advice? Don't try that at home!

Valerie and her husband now live on an 80-acre farm in northern Arkansas. She loves to hike the rocky, wooded hills behind the picturesque old house they renovated, watch for the wildlife so abundant in the area and think up new ideas for her books.

She's always been a dreamer, a romantic who invented happier endings for books and movies that didn't already end on a lighthearted note. She was an adult before she realized that everybody didn't automatically do the same thing!