Spotlight on Colleen Thompson
(Gwyneth Atlee)
(Published in 2001)

By Cheryl Bolen

With the release of her fifth Zebra historical in a span of 31 months, Colleen Thompson (writing as Gweneth Atlee) is the Happily Ever After spotlight author for December.

Her Trust to Chance, a December release, is now available in stores.

Few of us have the luxury of actually selling our first romance novel. Colleen is one of the lucky few. In fact, it only took her six months to sell her first historical romance.

However, she had already spent nine years writing novels in the young adult and fantasy genres, none of which were published.

"I'm not sure that writing fiction was ever a conscious choice, just a growing addiction," Colleen said.

Ever since she graduated from high school, she had written fiction and poetry on an almost-daily basis.

Her short stories were always rejected. She had better success with educational journal articles.

Having earned an A.A. from a community college in New Jersey, a bachelors in education from Trenton State College and a master's in education from Sam Houston State University, she taught in public schools in Arizona and the Houston area. She has taught primary science labs, language arts and social studies.

In fact, Colleen was working full time as a teacher with a young son (now 12) when she launched her career. Her husband, a Houston firefighter, "encouraged my writing, even during the 12 years I never let him read a work of it," Colleen said.

Colleen attributes her strong work ethic to her eventual publication. "I decided I was going to work as hard at writing and the pursuit of publication as I would at any job. I researched markets, agents (after having a poor experience with my first), and the romance genre, and I put myself on a schedule, in spite of having a young son and a full-time teaching job."

She is also a member of a great critique group that calls itself The Midwives--for obvious reasons.

Contests ultimately led to her first "big" break. She had won the Rice University Best Young Adult Award, the Houston Writers Conference Writing Spectrum Award, Northwest Houston RWA's MICA Award and the Woodlands Writers Guild Southern Literary Award.

In the Woodlands competition, an editor from Bantam selected her fantasy and her historical romance as first place winners and introduced her with a recommendation to an agent attending the conference. That agent took Colleen on and sold her work.

Colleen is happy writing historicals. "I adore American historicals. I'm never happier than when I'm digging into cool and obscure footnotes from interesting parts of history," Colleen said. "I've been blessed to learn about the Great Peshtigo Fire, the Galveston Great Storm, the explosion and sinking of the Sultana, and female Confederate spies."

She's been able to take a leave from her teaching job and focus on her writing. Which is a good thing. She's already contracted for two more novels: Innocent Deceptions will be released in July, and Dangerous Attraction is projected for next January.