I have been writing all my life, both fiction and non-fiction, and had my first story published when I was 17, which was translated into Esperanto (not by me, I should add!). The hero and main character of that story was a red wheelbarrow (yes, a wheelbarrow - are you judging me? I like to think it was moving... but then, wheelbarrows do tend to move, so...). My greatest passion in reading and writing has always been in the area of fantasy - especially epic fantasy. Like so many others, I discovered that epic fantasy was the best genre of all when I encountered Tolkien (not physically, I should add, but it would have been amazing to have a conversation with the man). Although I was already an avid reader (and writer!), it was running into a copy of The Two Towers in my school library at the age of 11 that first fired my imagination and left me with a drive to 'do this' for a living. I know what you're thinking: but The Two Towers is volume 2 in what is, itself, a sequel trilogy. Yes, yes, I know. And yet I picked it up off the shelf, took it home (actually, I checked it out of the library first, unlike a certain rascal in The Red Book of Errabrec) and read it from cover to cover in a day. I was hooked. I loved everything about it: the cover, the blurb, Tolkien's runes and doodles (should I have said 'illustrations'?), the list of other works, and the maps of course.

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Why have I not written anything since then, you ask. Actually, I have. I have written numerous books under other names. But this saga is my first full-length epic fantasy foray, and I'm very excited about it, because it feels like I am finally 'coming home'. My only other fantasy novel (written but still to be edited) is set in our own world. But I am having a lot of fun with creating the very different and fantastical world for this series.