About Me

Kirsten Saell recently relocated from the dark and sodden rainforests of coastal BC to the bleak, snowy reaches of Edmonton, Alberta. To everyone’s surprise, her three bickering children and yippy little dog did not impel her to aim her car off a conventient cliff during the long, excruciating drive, and they are all now happily settled in their new digs. Kirsten is reasonably certain a few dustbunnies tagged along for the ride, and will inevitably populate her new home in the thousands, and that suits her just fine. In the evenings she still slings hash at a local eatery, and during the day she still 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. The more things change, the more they stay the same…
 

Based on Canadian Standard Aptitude testing Kirsten had many career options open to her, some of which she might have pursued 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.  Three other titles followed on the heels of the first, and she’s currently working on 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.