After graduation, she found employment as a youth employment officer. She stayed in this profession until 1976, working first in
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, and then in
West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire. In 1976, Beverley moved to Canada, where her scientist husband was invited to do post-doctoral research at
Dalhousie University in
Halifax, Nova Scotia. When her professional qualifications proved unusable in the Canadian labour market, Beverley decided to develop her early interest in creative writing. Many of her "Rogue" characters were created in an initial manuscript entitled
A Regency Rape. At this point, Beverley did not have a fixed idea of the narrower literary boundaries drawn by the traditional
Regency romantic novel and thus created a literary hybrid. A precursor of the Regency historical novel, the work had a more varied cast of characters which, while respectful of the world of
Georgette Heyer, broadened the scope and intensity of the genre. At this time Beverley was still unpublished, but devoted her time to caring for her two young sons and participating in the woman-centred childbirth movement, which made her especially careful to portray births in her novels realistically but positively. The turning point in Beverley's writing career came when her move to
Montreal led to her attendance at a talk on "The state of romance in fiction" by Janet Adams, at Beaconsfield Library on 23 May 1984. The executive advisor of the Writers' Association for Romance and Mainstream demystified the creative process for the budding author and was sufficiently impressed by Beverley's writing to act as her agent. That same year, the family moved to
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, where Beverley became a founding member of the Ottawa Romance Writers' Association (ORWA). Formed in 1985, ORWA became her "nurturing community" for the next 12 years. In 1988, Beverley, who was actively writing science fiction as well as romance, was a finalist in the
L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. That same year, she sold her first romance novel. With her ensuing success in the latter genre, she allowed speculative writing to slide, though elements of it appear periodically in some of her romances and novellas. Beverly wrote at multiple blogs: •
Jo Talk, a solo blog where "she post[ed] anything that interest[ed] her" •
Minepast, a solo blog where "she share[d] interesting tid-bits of history she discover[ed] as she researche[d] her novels" • the
UK Historical Romance blog •
Word Wenches, a group blog comprising posts by eight women "historical authors who blog about history, writing, and anything vaguely related" ==Personal life==