I grew up participating in a wide variety of historical reenactment clubs, which I think gives me an unusually personal perspective on history. I know what it's like to run, full-tilt, in a heavy Elizabethan gown (hoops are not great for running) I know what it's like to cook a stew in a cast-iron pot over a campfire while wearing ten-yards of wool. I what it's like to stand on the deck of a ship in Georgian-hoops (skirts like a sail, pushing you across the slick wood). I've attempted to climb a tree in a corset (note I say "attempted", cause I don't think it can be done), I've ridden sidesaddle, I've even driven a coach and I can make a fire with no matches and sew an entire gown in the historical manner (all by hand). So a lot of what I write isn't so much my imagining what it would be like as my using my hands-on experience to inform my character's behavior and actions.

I'm originally from Boulder Creek, California, but I've lived in the Bay Area (San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland) since finishing undergrad at Hollins College in Virginia and moving "home"; for graduate school. My BA is in philosophy and English (wrote my thesis on the Absurd Skeptical Hero as the living embodiment of the existentialist), but I minored in creative writing and history. I won the Intro Journals Award when I was an undergraduate, and went on to study poetry at San Francisco State University under Frances Mayes (yes, as in Under the Tuscan Sun).

After finishing graduate school, it became painfully clear that a job in the arts wasn't going to pay me enough to eat, so set about looking for a "real" job. I ended up putting the analytical skills I learned as a philosophy major to work as an international trade consultant (basically, I fight with lawyers for a living). When I'm not doing that, I'm usually writing, though I very occasionally still take a day to go to a historical re-enactment, in the name of research of course.

I live in a 1916 bungalow in Oakland, California (which I'm slowly restoring ) with a giant dog named Clancy (he's half-Neapolitan Mastiff and half-Bullmastiff and weighs in at around 170lbs), a crowntail betta named Nigel, and Nigel's minions, the kuhli loaches (who can't be told apart, and thus do not get names). If you're ever at The Heart and Dagger by Lake Merritt and you see a woman with a giant, dark-brindle dog, come over and say hi, there's a 99% chance it's me (or my sister or best friend, who also have dogs from the same litter as Clancy).