I have a doctorate in nothing at all relevant to my writing.  I started reading paranormal for my daughter, because she was interested in it.  I am not much for the traditional HEA romance type of book, so I make my characters truly work for their happy endings. I strive to give each character depth and they are all a combination of many factors. Each one has traces of someone I have loved, someone I wish to be, someone I once knew or once was. When I first started writing, it was on Facebook in several different writing groups before starting my own. My rule for any writer to join was that their character had to be unique, they couldn't make a character based off of a known series. I created my world and people in my group worked their characters into it.