New York Times best-selling award-winning author Eileen Dreyer, known as Kathleen Korbel to her Silhouette readers, is returning for an encore performance as our 2012 Retreat From Harsh Reality speaker. She has had 38 novels and 9 short stories published in romance, romantic suspense, fantasy-romance, medico-forensic suspense, and historical romantic adventure. She is currently continuing her award-winning Drake's Rakes series about a group of gentleman spies in post-Waterloo Britain. The second trilogy of the series, The Last Chance Academy, will premier with an e-novella this summer.

       Dreyer won her first publishing award in 1987, when she was named the best new Contemporary Romance Author by RT Bookclub. Along the way she's picked up more than half dozen RT awards for excellence and enough Ritas® to place her in the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. Since extending her reach to suspense, she has also earned a coveted Anthony Award nomination.

       Eileen is an addicted traveler, having sung in some of the best Irish pubs in the world, and admits she sees research as a handy way to salve her insatiable curiosity. She counts film producers, police detectives and Olympic athletes as some of her sources and friends. She's also trained in forensic nursing and death investigation. Her most recent trips included visits to England and Italy as well as India for research for her Drake's Rakes series.

       A retired trauma nurse, Eileen lives in her native St. Louis with her husband, children, and large and noisy Irish family, of which she is the reluctant matriarch.

       Eileen will be presenting two sessions for MMRWA's Retreat From Harsh Reality:

• "His Brain/Her Brain": It isn't your imagination. He does think/perceive and problem-solve differently than you do, and there are biological reasons. Learn how to use these differences to your advantage in your writing and your daily life!

• "I'm Evil Twins. . . Twice": Eileen admits to not being able to sit still for more than ten minutes so it is quite logical that she would find herself at home in multiple genres. She will discuss her genre-hopping experiences and how the fundamental story-telling process still remains the same.

       For more information about Eileen, please visit her website at www.EileenDreyer.com