Barbara Leiding is real estate publicist who was instrumental in the successful launch of Southern California Home & Garden magazine and the market expansion of Peninsula and Northern California Home & Garden magazines for Westar Media. She has written for Previews, Coldwell Banker's luxury properties magazine, and L.A. Parent magazine. Her credits also include creating multi-million dollar sales proposals and presentations for MetLife, HSBC, Barclay's, IBM and Kellogg's, among others. She was honored at the 2009 Hawaii Writers Conference with a John Hughes Prose Writing Award.