Bernie taught English for many years and completed her debut novel, Death and Deception, when she escaped the classroom and could finally stop marking essays. These days she writes, walks, bends a bit in yoga and sings a bit in a choir. Her focus is firmly on the creative, although her attempts to foist knitted garments of unpredictable quality on family and friends have received mixed reviews. Bernie's innate leaning towards crime, at least in the literary sense, made the genre the natural home for her first book. She is already working on the first draft of the second Dan Hellier murder mystery, where she hopes he's going to calm down a bit and not be so hasty... In other news, Bernie has completed a first draft of a YA thriller called 'By Fire and By Water' for which she is hoping to find representation in the spring. Also part of a trilogy, this book will introduce Ellie Morgan, a girl with powerful abilities on a mission to rescue her father and save her people.