Dawn Lairamore

[excerpted from author's website]

As a kid, I always dreamed about becoming an author, but I wasn't very good at the whole sitting down and writing thing. I liked being on the move—climbing trees, picking flowers, walking in the woods, sledding in the snow. I did love books, when I could sit still long enough to read them. (It helped that you could read a little at a time, then come back later for more.)

I grew up all over the world since my dad was in the military and my family moved every couple of years. Homes, schools, classmates, and friends came and went, but books were a constant in my life. I had a small collection that I'd pack over and over again, and they'd follow me wherever the winds happened to blow us. I still have most of those books today. Eventually my family settled in California, my dad's home state, where I went to high school and received a degree in English from the University of California, Davis.

When I finished school, I worked as an editorial assistant for a small publishing house and later as a technical writer for a huge software conglomerate (where I did a ton of writing, but all along the lines of users' manuals and instruction guides). Eventually, I went back to school to get a paralegal degree so I could work in the legal field.