Rena's tenth-grade English teacher convinced her to enter an essay contest, which she won. The essay was printed, she saw her first byline and a career journalist was born.

Along the way, she became an avid reader of romance and suspense novels, always thinking in the back of her head that she would write one someday. She carved an award-winning path through the journalism world, starting her career just out of college at a small, now-defunct weekly newspaper.