About the author...about the work.

Not long ago on a visit to Texas, I heard a man brag to his buddies that he had a well-trained hunting dog; that she bounds to the door and stands attentively anytime he takes his shotgun out of his closet, that she always walks respectfully two steps behind and to his left when he takes her out in public, and that she has never come in lower than second place in an American Kennel Club championship. He finished his story with a saucy grin: "I named her Trudy, after my wife, because they have so much in common."

Trudy (the wife) was so annoyed she asked permission to go out for the night with her girlfriends.

That exchange unleashed a flood of memories from my own childhood. At about the time I hit puberty, I started tuning into the "messages" that rattled around in my world - many of which could be boiled down to: "a good woman knows her place". That place was the kitchen or the laundry room or maybe standing behind the cash register at the Winn-Dixie, but most definitely, no woman belonged in "the boss's office" - unless, of course, she was there to deliver a hot cup of freshly-brewed coffee, or to crawl under the desk to administer a dose of stress relief.

Undoubtedly those are the reasons I've always been intrigued by the disparate roles and standards assigned to men and women in our society - be they sexual mores, career options or division of family obligations. These are themes that color my fiction.

Catherine Calabretta, the heroine of FINAL BETRAYAL, is sassy, sexy and smart - qualities I would write for a hero of either gender. I hope you'll come to think of her as I do.

ELAINE TAYLOR is a former IT professional and "contingent workforce management" (CWM) subject matter expert. She has consulted on CWM with Global 2000 companies such as BP, DuPont, Northrop Grumman, Charles Schwab and Royal Bank of Canada; and has published white papers, articles, trend analyses and reports on CWM.

Elaine grew up in Texas and has lived in Michigan, as well as southern and northern California. She has served on the Board of Raphael House, a shelter for homeless families. She currently resides in San Francisco.