Hope Tarr

Hope Tarr was born in Baltimore, Maryland to William "Bill" Tarr, a telephone repairman, and Nancy, a homemaker. An only child, Tarr was always a bit of a daydreamer, preferring the company of her fictional characters to human playmates. A self-avowed history geek, Anglophile, and irrepressible romantic, she wrote her first "novel," a Tudor-set romance, between the ages of eleven and twelve. But writing seemed too uncertain a career course for Tarr to chart. Instead she focused her studies on the social sciences, with an eye to earning a tenure track position in academia. After graduating Summa Cum Laude from Towson University with a B.A. in Psychology, she went on to earn a Master's Degree in Psychology and a Ph.D. in Education from The Catholic University of America. But academia was not where Tarr's heart lay. She spent several, restless years as a data scientist to consulting firms in Washington, D.C. One summer day, on hiatus between client projects, she found herself in a bookstore, wandering the aisles in search of not only something to read but, more importantly, the answer for what to do with her life. A peach-colored paperback literally toppled off a topmost shelf in the Reference section and struck her on the head. The book was "How to Write a Romance Novel & Get It Published" by Kathryn Falk. The incident forced Tarr to face a terribly inconvenient truth: she didn't want to analyze or teach people. What she wanted, what she'd always wanted, was to write about them! For the next six years, she wrote manuscript after manuscript, largely in longhand on the DC Metro traveling between client appointments. Despite a plethora of rejections, she persevered, eventually acquiring a literary agent who sold her second, full-length novel, A Rogue's Pleasure to Penguin Books. The book released in 2000 and was a smash success. Twenty more historical and contemporary novels followed, including two contemporary erotic novels with adult entertainment legend, Jenna Jameson. In 2014, Twentieth Century Fox optioned Tarr's contemporary romantic comedy, Operation Cinderella for feature film. (The book is the first of a four-book series). In 2008 Tarr relocated to New York City where she co-founded Lady Jane's Salon,® New York City's first-and so far only-monthly reading series devoted to romance fiction. Entering its seventh year, the Salon donates its net proceeds to the NYC charity, Women in Need. Today Tarr lives in Manhattan with her real-life romance hero and their rescue cats. She divides her time between writing Irish Eyes, an historical women's fiction saga spanning the Gilded Age to Jazz Age New York City, and her first screenplay.