Kirsten Saell lives in a small town on the coast of British Columbia, Canada, with her husband, three kids, one fat, stupid dog and a rat who thinks he's human. In the evenings she slings hash at a local eatery. During the day she clings to the fraying edges of her sanity by watching bad TV, reading, gardening, upholstering furniture, playing computer solitaire, writing and doing anything else she can think of to avoid actual housework.
Based on Canadian Standard Aptitude testing Kirsten had many career options open to her, some of which she might have learned about had she ever bothered to attend class (her record for most accumulated absences still stands at her high school, nearly twenty years later). She graduated with (almost) honours and took two painful stabs at university, where her English Lit professor told her she ought to be a writer. Though the validity of his opinion remains to be seen, it dovetailed nicely with Kirsten's philosophy in life - if you're going to do something difficult, it might as well be something you're good at, and you love, and you can do in yesterday's makeup and a housecoat.
Kirsten has been writing fiction since her teens. You can't imagine how relieved she is that none of her stories from that era have ever seen the light of day. Over the years she wrote about a gazillion words of crap, most of it straight epic fantasy. However, even after she started getting good she felt constrained by the dictates of the genre and its intended audience. Far too often she found herself thinking, "good grief, I can't write that, it's waaaayyy too dirty," and hitting the delete button. Then one day she discovered the rich and varied world of erotic romance ebooks and was smitten.
By smut.
Three months later she had her first erotic romance fantasy novella, Crossing Swords, in her hot little hand and ready for submission. Not long after that Samhain Publishing offered her a contract and the rest, as they say, is history. She is currently working on a sequel to Crossing as well as several related stories. All of them remain true to Kirsten's humble beginnings in the realm of epic fantasy. That is, they abound with heroes and villains, good and evil, a general spirit of mayhem and - as an homage to her day job - some of the most unsavory cuisine you'll find between the virtual pages of an ebook.
