The beginning: I grew up in a small town in Southeast Missouri. What an amazing place to grow up! I learned some odd skills that have actually come in handy at various points during my life. My brother says we are Mountain Williams, i.e. educated hillbillies. It's not a bad heritage. I've seen many beautiful places since I left home, but the Ozarks still hold my heart.

Both my parents read avidly and infected me with the love of books. I can remember being so obsessed with "The Sword of Shannara" that I wouldn't even put it down to walk from room to room or to eat. I always saved my allowance for trips to the used book store in "the big city." I would sit there with stacks of science fiction and fantasy paperbacks piled around me trying to decide which dozen or so I really, really wanted to take home. I still have most of them.

The summer after I graduated high school, I joined the U.S. Air Force. I was a Triple Nickel with a Civil Engineering squadron. The dumbest thing I ever did was leave the service. Most of my jobs since then have been military related either as a military spouse or a contractor.

Places I've been: South Dakota, where I learned to ice fish and explored the Black Hills and Badlands.

Guam, where I learned to SCUBA, played Dungeons & Dragons, joined the Society for Creative Anachronism, and tried to learn to fence.

San Antonio, where I learned that politics in hobby organizations can be just as bad as in the office.

RAF Upper Heyford, where I got to take part in a battle reenactment at Warwick Castle.

Incirlik AB, Turkey, where I learned Turkish, bought lots of cool stuff, and discovered that I'm not cut out to be a Muslim man's second wife.

Houston, Texas, where I relearned to ride horses and played medieval equestrian games. It's also the place where I hit rock bottom and decided to take a contract in a war zone.

Al Asad AB, Iraq where my new life began. I had thought that I was a worldly woman till I went to work there, where my education into the seedier side of life took place. Thankfully, I got bored with that pretty quickly and straightened up. The best part of the job was that I met an amazing man. It took him a while to convince me that he was legitimate, but he did, and we were married in 2006. After we met our financial goal, we moved back to Houston where he had a job waiting. This is testament to how much I love him because I'd intended to move back to the Ozarks.

Writing background: When I first moved to Houston from Turkey, a friend of mine introduced me to the Harry Potter series, of which there were three books at the time. I wasn't really interested in reading "children's books," but she told me to just read the first chapter. The next morning I was at her door begging for the other two books. I finished them off in a few days and wanted more, but there weren't any. That's when I discovered fan fiction. It didn't take long before I went from reading it to writing it. That quickly became unsatisfactory, and it was only a short leap to writing original fiction.

I mostly write short speculative fiction but have sold a couple of non-fiction pieces as well.

My husband supports my dream to be a writer but is completely useless for feedback. Everything I write he thinks is perfect and Heaven help the person who says otherwise. Luckily, I found a writers group that isn't afraid of me or him and happily tears my writing apart. I'm a much better writer thanks to them. And I keep writing thanks to my husband.

Non-writing interests: People think we are sickening for holding hands and occasionally wearing matching shirts. In the SCA, people are getting used to us wearing matching garb at events. We are best friends.

I read, blog, hunt, fish, and pretend that I like housework.

I no longer ride horses and am concentrating on garb, disturbing hats, and storytelling. My husband has discovered medieval cooking and brewing.

I like to volunteer at one of the local animal shelters when I can, walking dogs and doing odd jobs.

We have three entertaining cats. We would have dogs, but he's a pit bull kind of guy and I'm a greyhound kind of gal. There is hope that we will compromise in the future with Dobermans. The cats will not be pleased.

One day, we will retire in Ozarks. Yes, my husband loves me enough to move out of Texas.

If you would like to contact me for business purposes, please email: lnd.lindsey@gmail.com.

If you would like to contact me for personal reasons, please email: wishwords@gmail.com.

Do not send me stories, manuscripts or excerpts of your own for review. I will not read them for legal reasons. See my links page for information on groups that do critiques.

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