Cara Bertoia

Growing up in a straight laced Southern family, I was always fascinated with casinos. In my twenties on a summer hiatus from teaching in North Carolina, I drove to California and became a dealer at Caesars in Lake Tahoe. My mother highly disapproved of my working in a casino, "a place so bad it has 'sin' in the middle."

Thankfully the paper from Palm Springs disagreed with my mother. The Desert Sun raved, "As if often the case, the author pulls from real-life experiences to create a worthy piece of fiction. And her own life is a vivid kaleidoscope of adventure. Casino Queen arrives at the perfect time when crime-solving tales that revolve around strong female protagonists aren’t just a luck of a draw. They’re downright successful. (See TV’s "Equalizer" and "Poker Face" for samplers.) To that end, Casino Queen has the makings of a streaming series."

Eventually, I succumbed to pressure from the family and returned east to take a high-tech job in Boston. I also began working on my MFA in writing at Emerson.

While in Boston I was offered the opportunity to join Princess Cruises as a croupier. Jumping at the chance, I spent the next five years circling the globe. Sometimes life exceeds your dreams. I was awed by the wonders of Venice, the fjords of Norway, and the Northern Lights in Leningrad but on the downside I also watched glaciers melt at an alarming rate in Alaska, snorkeled to coral reefs killed by pollution in the Caribbean, and witnessed the devastation as the Amazon burned. It was the best education I could ever have had. Taking advantage of every opportunity to be a tour guide, I soaked in as much history as I could.

I returned from ships with a very special souvenir, my husband Ray. Besides being a handsome Glaswegian, he is my co-author. We also produced a movie on walking the 500-mile "Camino De Santiago," in Spain.