A funny thing happened to Bend’s Marie Harte on the way to becoming a New York Times and USA Today best-selling romance novelist: She joined the U.S. Marines and served for five years as a communications officer.

“I needed money for school and my grandfather had been in the Navy, so I joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps at Penn State University hoping to get a scholarship,” Harte explained. “It was a joint Navy and Marine Corps program, and I was so impressed with the Marines that I just had to join,” she said.

After Harte left the Marines, she was working a 9-to-5 job and raising her young children when she realized she wanted to write for a living. She had always been a voracious reader and had been trying to write during her lunch breaks and spare time. Finally, in 2003 she quit her job to write full time.

“I wrote nine novels that first year, but none of them were published,” Harte recalled. However, several of the rejection letters she received provided constructive criticism and encouraged her to resubmit her work, and in late 2004, her first book was published by a small electronic publisher.

Harte’s first time on a best-seller list was as part of an anthology of erotic romance called “A Taste of Decadence” that made the USA Today charts.

“I was in the Safeway on Century Drive with my kids when I found out, and I let them celebrate by buying Twinkies and candy,” Harte said.

“I was in the same Safeway a year later when I learned another one of my stories that was part of a bundle titled ‘Mastered’ made the New York Times Best Seller list,” she continued. “My kids were super happy — not so much about the book, but because they got candy again,” Harte laughed.

Her most-recognized stories among romance fans are the four-book McCauley Brothers series, published in 2014 by Sourcebooks. She’s released more than 100 stories in many of the romance subgenres including paranormal, science fiction and contemporary romance.

Harte is less concerned now with trying to pursue the more traditional route for authors of an exclusive contract with one of the larger publishing houses. She has joined the growing number of authors who take a hybrid approach to distributing their work, writing for several publishers in addition to occasionally self-publishing her novels. Some of her work is released in both print and e-books, with some released in electronic formats only.

“Independent publishing has turned the industry on its head,” Harte said. These days she finds it harder to predict which of her stories will do well and which ones publishers will be interested in.

“With small-press publishers you have a lot more latitude to write what you want. They’re more invested in building you as an author,” Harte said.

Her latest novel, “Test Drive,” was released June 7, and she is hard at work on her next novel, due to be released in September.