Windela Kilmer was born on May 26, 1947 in Holland. She always wanted to write. She was a dreamer, reading books all the time and making up her own stories. She wrote them in notebooks and illustrated them herself. One day her brothers burned them in the attic, fortunately not burning down the house. They don't remember this now, but she does! As a child growing up in Holland, she also always wanted to travel. Holland is very flat and she wanted to see mountains! Tropical beaches with coconut palms! Deserts! Interesting people! And then she wanted to write adventurous love stories set in these exotic places.

As luck would have it, she fell in love with a globetrotting U.S.American. Windela met him in Amsterdam, he asked her to marry him in Rome, and they tied the knot in a ten-minute ceremony in Kenya, where he was a Peace Corps Volunteer. Some wedding that was! Not the stuff of romantic dreams, but really good for a laugh. After Kenya they lived in his native United States for a while.

They also lived four years in Ghana, West Africa where not only their first daughter was born but her her first Mills & Boon romance as well. It took her a year to write. It was set in Ghana, and she called it SWEET NOT ALWAYS, a slogan found on a big colorfully decorated truck that transported people, goods, and live chickens. She signed her book as Karen Van der Zee. Her editor later told her that her manuscript was fished out of the slush pile, one out of a thousand that make it to publication. Good thing she didn't know the odds before she started. Sometimes ignorance is bliss... Now, she has written over thirty books and, not surprisingly, many are set in exotic locations. Writing as Mona van Wieren, she received a RITA for a Silhouette Romance entitled RHAPSODY IN BLOOM. Windela loves the challenge of living in a foreign country where the food is different, the people interesting and life gives her endless romantic inspiration for her writing. So, she says, she'll just keep going for a while.

Windela's husband's work as a development economist has taken them to several other countries. They lived in Indonesia, in Ramallah (Palestine), and then again in Ghana. She now lives in Armenia, which lies east of Turkey and north of Iran. Along the way they acquired two more kids. All three are now grown and living in the United States.