Erica Spindler (born 1957) is a New York Times Best-Selling author, who specializes in romanticthrillers. Spindler was raised in Rockford, Illinois. She lives with her husband, an advertisement executive, and their two sons in New Orleans, Louisiana. Spindler had planned on becoming an artist, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Delta State University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of New Orleans in the visual arts. In June 1982, while she was in bed with a cold, she picked up a romance novel for relief from daytime television. She was immediately hooked and soon decided to try to write one herself. She leaped from romance to suspense in 1996 with her novel Forbidden Fruit.