Growing up in Bath, England, Janet Quin-Harkin did not give much thought to becoming a writer someday, yet writing was very much a part of her youthful activities. "My mother says I wrote my first poem when I was four.

"I was movie struck during my teens and created a film star persona for myself. Furthermore, I would put out a newspaper for myself reviewing all the movies I was in. I created movies filled with wonderful dramatic stories about lost love, being swept off cliffs, and all sorts of things. I wrote poetry in my teens, too, and saw my first short story published by sixteen.

"I attended a highly academic girls school in England and didn't meet boys until I went off to college, so all the customary emotional upheavals took place at a later age."

After college Quin-Harkin took a job with the BBC and...