Author Cathy Yardley in her Carlsbad home. John Raifsnider/For The North County Times Order a copy of this photo Visit our Photo Gallery

Everybody's kind of in a state of transition in society right now, said author Cathy Yardley, whose latest book, "Couch World" (Red Dress Ink, $12.95) is about a woman whose life is "kind of imploding."

Yardley's book tells the story of Gen X urban nomad PJ "the DJ" Sherman, who essentially has decided to give up the struggle with the system ---- including career, home and bills ---- and just live in the moment.

"She doesn't have a mortgage, she doesn't have a boyfriend, she doesn't have a car payment, she doesn't have an address ---- she just floats," Yardley said.

The trouble is that when PJ touches down, she needs a place to settle. She needs ---- a couch. That's where her friends come in, offering her shelter and a place to sleep.

The world of the couch is not without rules, however.

"One of the key rules to the way I live is: leave the place you stay the way you found it," PJ explains early in the book. "Don't mess up bathrooms, don't eat their food, don't leave your crap all over the place. Most of this is general knowledge. Common courtesy stuff. You're always going to need a couch, and you want people to be okay with letting you be a repeat visitor. There aren't a lot of A-list couches. There's also the slim possibility that you will need to relocate in a hurry. I sleep in pajamas that I can, if necessary, run outside in. Most of my stuff is always in my bag or close to it, and my shoes are forever next to my bag."

But the book also shows that no matter how hard a person tries to run from life's issues, they will find running is not the best way to deal with them.

Yardley said the book is written for the "Gen X to Gen Y" folks, but can appeal to anyone.

"I write for women," she said. "I've had men say they enjoy the book, but I think that my experience speaks more directly to women ... somebody who's feeling really frustrated and having those escape fantasies while they're stuck in a conference. When I came up with the story, that's where I was."

Yardley, 32, grew up in Carlsbad and graduated from San Dieguito High School. After attending UC Berkeley and then living in both the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles during what she laughingly calls "the lost years," she's back in the area and currently living with her mom.

And, no, the former finance analyst said, "Couch World" is not autobiographical. She said she was more of a "corporate cube farmworker" when she was writing the book.

"I've been a 'couch,' " she said. "I've had people crash at my place a lot, and I know people who live a transient lifestyle. And I got to know a lot of DJs while I was writing it, so I had a chance to do a lot of research on the lifestyle."

Yardley writes what she and others fondly call "chick lit." A book called "L.A. Woman" preceded this one. It told the story of three women "coming of consciousness" as they learn about themselves and what they want to do with their lives, she said.

Her upcoming opus, due next year, is called "Turning Japanese." It's about a woman trying to gain her bearings going from a "staid corporate life to an artistic life."

Yardley has also penned "relatively racy" romance novels for Harlequin Enterprises Ltd., which their Web site said is part of the publishing group that includes Harlequin, Silhouette, Steeple Hill, MIRA, Gold Eagle, Worldwide Mystery and Red Dress Ink.

She said she got into crafting fiction through writing romance novels. "That's the most amazing genre to break into because it's almost entirely women," she said. "So it's so supportive and so easy to get into."

Yardley said she joined a chapter of the Romance Writers of America, not to become a writer but to learn to be a publicist. "That's how delusional I was," she said, laughing. Members of the group encouraged her to write and were instrumental in her getting published, she said.

She is a frequent guest speaker at several national writers conferences, and said she still belongs to several romance writers groups.

The "Couch World" introduction page whimsically describes Yardley thus: "Needs to get out more. When not writing, she is probably either cruising the Internet, sleeping or watching D-list movies and adding to her unnatural store of character-actor trivia."

The lighthearted bio continued, "Her family is considering performing an intervention for her addiction to pop culture."

Yardley's mom, Yin, has been very supportive of her work and is proud of what she's doing, Yardley said.

"She appreciates it now," Yardley said. "When I first published, she said, 'That's great,' and a beat later she said, 'You're not writing under your own name, are you?' "

For information, reach Cathy Yardley at cathy@cathyyardley.com. or visit the Web site at www.RedDressInk.com.

Contact staff writer Agnes Diggs at (760) 740-3511 or adiggs@nctimes.com.