Since 2001, Paula Riley’s freelance work has appeared in the magazines Sierra Living, NEVADA, Montana Living, Comstock's Business, and Fairways and Greens, and Range; also Reno-Gazette Journal, Reno News & Review, and Audubon International’s website. For the online marketing of intellectual property, she researched and digested patent details and the clients' own one-sheets for products from carbon nanotubes to gelators and products for screening psychoactive drugs in order to produce marketing materials for international consumption (where there was no fiction allowed).

Riley has presented writing programs and workshops to northern Nevada’s largest writers’ organization, where she also served eight years as a director. Today she instructs adult community college students in subjects ranging from Breaking into Freelance to Writing Memoir. Wearing an editor’s hat, she assists authors with story editing, copy editing, and self-publishing.

The University of Nevada, Reno, is where Riley earned a degree in social work with an emphasis on family violence. That led to Child Protective Services work and the writing of family assessments and reports to Washoe County District Court. Through working with a diverse range of men and women, she recognizes people as magnificent, flawed, complex creatures. Just what the story doctor ordered.