Melissa McShane is the author of EMISSARY, THE SMOKE-SCENTED GIRL, and the novels of Tremontane, SERVANT OF THE CROWN and RIDER OF THE CROWN. Her love of reading has been a constant in her life and she still remembers the places she lived by the books she was reading there: the Riddle-Master trilogy in New York, the Foundation series in Colorado, Howl's Moving Castle in Texas, Crown Duel in Utah. That love of reading stayed with her after she settled with her family in Utah and grew into a love of writing, first critical essays and reviews, then fiction. Her family includes her husband (a long-suffering man willing to let ideas bounce off him at speed), four children (also long-suffering and happy to live off macaroni and cheese while Mom writes) and three very needy cats, one of whom is so dumb he frequently runs into walls.