"It's never too late to make you dream come true."

Cheryl Robinson is a native Detroiter currently residing in Central Florida. In her formative years, she attended Gesu Catholic School and has fond memories of the nuns and sisters, but not of her plaid uniform. She also attended the college preparatory high school, Cass Technical High School, where she majored in business marketing and became a member of DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America).  

In 1989, during Cheryl’s senior year at Wayne State University, the marketing major discovered her joy for writing while taking a fiction writing class as an elective.  It was then that her professor convinced her to enter the Agnes Bruenton writing competition that the English Department sponsored annually.  With the deadline looming, she completed her two-hundred plus page novella entitled, Blues Bottom in just two short weeks and earned an honorable mention and a fifteen dollar check.  And even though she’d considered framing the check, the often broke college student wound up cashing it and buying who knows what instead. The citation from the final judge commended the story “in part for the ambition and hard work that went into its composition, and in part for the genuine skills its author demonstrates…in writing dialogue.”

After earning what she considered as an easy A in fiction writing, she questioned whether she should pursue writing as a career.  However, her parents urged her to stick to business and upon graduating pursue a career within corporate America so she would have a “real” job and some security, and that’s exactly what she did.

But she just couldn't give up on her dream.  In 2002 and 2003, prior to obtaining a traditional publishing contract, she self-published two novels; Memories of Yesterday and When I Get Free.  However, it was Memories of Yesterday that was picked up by a major publisher and re-released under the title, If It Ain’t One Thing.  

In 2004, fourteen years after she graduated from college with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Cheryl was working full-time in corporate America and had been enrolled in an online MBA program through the University of Phoenix, when she landed her first publishing contract.  The two-book deal with NAL Trade, a division of the Penguin Group, was for If It Ain’t One Thing (2005) and its sequel, It’s Like That (2006). In addition, she has penned a novella for HarperCollins for the erotic anthology, These Are My Confessions. Since then, she has inked four additional book deals with NAL for her novels; Sweet Georgia Brown (2008), In Love with a Younger Man (2009), When I Get Where I’m Going (Sept. 2010), and Remember Me (Sept. 2011).  She has made the Essence Bestseller list and many regional bestseller lists, including The Dallas Morning News.  And, she has set many goals for her writing career, which include becoming a New York Times bestselling author. Cheryl’s novels are primarily character-driven and her themes often revolve around family, relationships, love, beating the odds, and redemption.

 She loves dogs, crème brûlée, and almost anything organic.  And the “real” job in corporate America her parents urged her to pursue? Well, after nearly twelve years with an automotive-related company and four corporate relocations where she’s lived in New York, Kansas, Texas, and Florida, she lost it.  In the summer of 2010, the company was forced to downsize due to the ailing economy. However, she always considered her passion for writing to be a real job, even when she only had time to write her novels at night and on weekends. Now she has even more time to focus on fiction.