The writing bug bit hard and early for Bennettsville, SC native Cheris
F. Hodges. As a student at Marlboro County High School, Hodges knew she
was going to be a writer. She joined the school's newspaper staff and
decided journalism was the way to go.

Upon graduating in 1995, she enrolled at Johnson C. Smith University and
majored in journalism, all the while working on her novels.

While working at the Covington News in Covington, Georgia, Hodges wrote
and self-published "Searching For Paradise."

"After covering police and courts all day, I needed an escape. So, I
pulled out my laptop and started writing 'Searching,'" she said. Fiction
had always been an escape for Hodges, she said.

After completing her first novel, she tried, unsuccessfully to find an
agent and publisher. Determined to share her work with the world, Hodges
used the internet publisher Iuniverse.com.

A year later, she completed her first romance novel, "Revelations." This
time, she found an agent and a publisher that saw the value of her work.

Maryland agent Sha-Shana Crichton signed Hodges to her agency and with
in months, she had a two-book deal with Genesis Press Inc.

"Revelations" went on to become one of Genesis's best sellers. Fans and
critics alike lauded her second Genesis Press novel, "Cautious Heart".

Hodges sticks to her South Carolina roots in her new novel, "A Love of
Her Own," setting it in Columbia.

"A lot of people write books about the south and don't really capture
the flavor of the Carolinas. I want to put South Carolina and North
Carolina on the literary map."