Although she was born in Missoula, Montana, Christine grew up in Southern California in the 1960's which meant that beaches and water were a constant part of her life. She was not yet a teenager when she first took the helm of a boat, a rented Lido 14, on
the waters of Newport Harbor. She was hooked. Whether it was sneaking down to take out her father’s little 22-foot sloop alone or crewing on a Baltic Trader sailing up the Mexican coast, from the moment of that first sail, boats have always been a part of her life.
Christine spent a year in France as a foreign exchange student, and it was there she became addicted to travel and adventure. She attended seven different schools from California to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico before finally getting her first college degree. Early on she wrote and published magazine stories about her adventures including riding a bicycle 1,000 miles down the newly opened Baja California highway and crewing on a 44-foot sailboat throughout the islands of
After working in a bookshop in Honolulu for a year, Christine and Jim sailed back to California where they built a 55-foot custom sailing yacht, Sunrise. After launch, they sailed her to St. Thomas,USVI where they ran crewed charters for over two years. While in the islands, Christine received her 100-ton Captain’s License for Auxiliary Sail and became a windsurfing instructor as well as a gourmet cook.
From the Virgin Islands, Christine and Jim sailed to Florida where they settled in 1984, three months before the birth of their son. Although she wasn’t wild about Florida at first, every summer they sailed to the Bahamas or the Keys, and the natural beauty of the area soon converted her.
They lived aboard their boat on the Intracoastal Waterway and on canals off the New River, and Christine got to know Fort Lauderdale from the water better than she knew the city streets.
In 1993, Christine and her family took off sailing once again and spent two years cruising the waters of the Caribbean. It was during this voyage that she started her first novel, SURFACE TENSION. Within two years of their return, Christine divorced, and finding herself a single mom in tough financial straits, Christine went back to work as a teacher, and writing nights and weekends, she finally finished SURFACE TENSION.
In 2005, while working on the fourth novel in the Seychelle Sullivan series, Christine bought her own sailboat, a Caliber 33, and renamed the boat Talespinner. In 2011, Christine retired from her position as an English professor at Broward College to write and cruise full-time aboard Talespinner.
