Our Entrepreneurs Abroad feature this month is a chapter from my new book “Adventurers Abroad: The New American Expat Generation.”

“Moving to Brighton was sort of like the official start of my adult life. I moved here, got married and found a real job. From now on I could be whoever I wanted to be. It was the start of a new beginning.”

Milford, Ohio is a conservative, sleepy little town of about seven thousand people just northeast of Cincinnati. It was the kind of town young liberal men and women wanted to leave as soon as they finished high school.

Nicky Bryce-Sharron, 29, was one of those young people. She left Milford in her rear view mirror when she was eighteen and moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana to attend McNeese State University, aiming for a double major in psychology and sociology. But Hurricanes Rita and Katrina gave Lake Charles a one-two punch and knocked Nicky and her roommate out of their apartment after her first two years in school. She never returned.

Nicky had an ordinary small town America childhood, growing up with her two younger brothers. Dad was an operating room nurse for years until he retired. Mom managed the office for the local American Lung Association. Family trips during her childhood never left the shores of America.

She returned home to Milford after the hurricanes ended her immediate school plans and took a local retail job to earn her keep. Her real interest, though, was online, where she could find the adventure missing in her life amidst the electrons connecting her with like-minded people from all over the world.

“In the evening after work I started playing World of Warcraft, which was a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. That is where I met my future husband, Mark. He also loved online gaming. We were in the same guild, or player organization. Mark and I communicated through voice commands and voice programs, like Skype. We started talking and pretty soon game talk became personal talk, and eventually we just met up.”

Mark, who is seven years older than Nicky, lived in Brighton, England, the famous seaside resort city on the south coast, about forty minutes by train from London.

“We met online in the summer of 2006 and had a long-distance relationship for about a year and a half. I visited Mark in Brighton several times before I moved over there, which was the first time in my life I had ever left the U.S. We got married in Milford in October of 2007 but it took about another three months before the visa paperwork came through and I could legally join Mark in Brighton.”

The United Kingdom does not grant automatic citizenship to spouses of U.K. citizens, so Nicky remains in England on a United Kingdom Permanent Residence visa. The visa provides an “Indefinite leave to remain,” which allows her to work or start a business there and has no time limits on her stay in the United Kingdom. Nicky plans to apply for citizenship this year.

After setting up their new home in a rented apartment in Brighton, Nicky set about finding a new job and landed one at the local American Express office with the help of Mark, who had worked for the company for several years in customer service.

“It was the first real, adult job I ever had. I worked for American Express in their customer service department for about five years, but we both knew that we wanted something of our own, something that could be built on what we love and what we are really good at: the Internet.”