Carolina Valdez, author of the popular Amber Heat Wave winner Dark Stranger, composed her first stories at the age of eight. That was about the time Santa left the first books she had in her home-abridged versions of the Wizard of Oz for children. She has happy memories of trips to used bookstores with her mother to locate and buy the full versions when she was ten or twelve.

Captivated by the odd characters and their adventures, Carolina wrote a letter to L. Frank Baum, the author. Ruth Plumly Thompson replied, enclosing a map of the Kingdom of Oz. Sadly, the letter and map have disappeared over the years, but the love of writing and creating her own fictional worlds have remained. Carolina has a collection of Oz books, one of which, given to her by her mother when it was new, has recently been appraised at $350.

Before writing for Amber Quill Press, Carolina had more than sixty publications to her credit, ranging from children's stories to articles in professional journals. A public health nurse with an advanced university degree, she won RN magazine's First Award for Writing, and has been published also in the American Journal of Nursing. She was a Guideposts Writers Workshop and Guideposts Reunion Workshop winner, and her work has appeared in that periodical and several Daily Guideposts books. Among her other wins are the Soul-Making Literary Prize for Essay, the Marjorie Davis Roller Award for non-fiction, Della Crowder Memorial and Millenium awards for poetry, and the Norman E. and Marjorie J. Roller first prize for a story about a horse that can float on water.

She contributed (under the name Carol Holman) to Mean Girls Grow Up, a book regarding adult female relational aggression due for release in August 2005.

Dark Stranger was her first venture into sensual romance. Her first attempt into the murder genre can be read on-line at Mysterical-E.

Valdez is a member of the Orange County Chapter of Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles, and The National League of American Pen Women, Inc., in Letters.

She resides with her husband in sunny Southern California.