User:Lynn Savatch/sandbox

Leigh Bale is a national award-winning American author of historical, contemporary and inspirational romance novels. Her love scenes are not as explicit as many other popular romances. She lives in Nevada with her professor husband.

Biography
Leigh Bale was raised in small rural towns throughout the Western United States. She is the daughter of a retired U.S. forest ranger and penned her first novel on an electric typewriter, before she had any outline or clue what she was doing. She has worked as a bookkeeper and administrative assistant, but her first love, after her husband, is writing. Her inspirational stories have won and finaled in numerous national writing contests including the Romance Writers of America prestigious Golden Heart (writing as Lora Bale) and the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence. Recently, Bale has penned a Forest Ranger series, a set of poignant romantic stories centered around the life and work of a forest ranger. Her father is a conservationist rather than a preservationist and has served as her consultant for these books. Her contemporary books deal with real-life situations that many people can relate to and have received four star reviews from Romantic Times Magazine. With a B.A. degree in History from the University of Nevada-Reno, Bale has also penned romantic historical novels.

Published Works

 * The Healing Place: 2007
 * The Heart's Warrior: 2008
 * The Forever Family: 2009
 * The Road to Forgiveness: 2010
 * The Forest Ranger's Promise: 2011
 * The Forest Ranger's Husband: 2011
 * The Forest Ranger's Child: 2012
 * Falling for the Forest Ranger: 2013

Personal Information
Bale's daughter was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor at the young age of seven years. Bale’s first published novel, “The Healing Place,” centers around a child suffering from an inoperable brain tumor. Previously titled "When Angels Fall” and written under the name of Lora Bale, The Healing Place won the Romance Writers of America Golden Heart for best inspirational in 2006 and was sold to one of the final round judges and published the following year by Harlequin Steeple Hill. While this book is a fictional story, Bale lived the research and the novel includes events her family actually survived while fighting to save their daughter's life. Bale's daughter is now a married woman and considered less than 1% survivorship in the world for her type of brain tumor.