When I was a teen, I wanted nothing like I wanted to be a published author, and my dream came true in 2009 when I was 23 and sold my first book to a major publisher. Over ten years later, I feel like I’ve grown up in the publishing industry. My fifth release, WARDENS OF ETERNITY, is a historical fantasy about a young woman who must use her wit and magic to outmaneuver Nazis and Ancient Egyptian gods to prevent global destruction. My dream has come with amazing experiences and daunting responsibilities, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything! My art has become my job. That’s amazing! Not many people get to do their art every day and get paid for it. That’s because it’s very hard to make a living doing art. My life depends on my writing and that’s a huge weight on my ability to focus and create. In addition, authors get paid different amounts on different schedules. There’s very little we and our agents can do about that. Sometimes an author is living on a fixed income for a long time. I’ve been able to travel and see amazing cities and meet wonderful people. Some of…

Right after we got engaged, my now-husband and I traveled to India with my mother. We met some of her Indian coworkers, and their eighteen-year-old daughters, who were planning careers in science and engineering. Still, these young women expected to choose husbands from among men vetted for them by parents and match-makers, and then have happy marriages. They told me that their parents had done well for them so far, and they expected their choice of mates would be good as well. For most of recorded history, marriages between young people have been arranged by parents and elders, though fiction often portrays first love and sexual attraction that throws arranged marriages into chaos. In my historical fiction about Viking Age Norway, I have created a mix of arranged and chosen marriages, with the chance of their success having much more to do with the personality and choices of those in the marriage than how it begins. I’m glad not to have had an arranged marriage for myself, but having been married for twelve years now, I think that some of the skills needed to make an arranged marriage work are also helpful in a chosen marriage. In fiction, I love…