Juliet E McKenna was born in Lincolnshire in 1965, later moved to Dorset, and now lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and two teenaged sons.
Since she started reading folk tales, Greek myths, the Narnia stories and the Hobbit somewhere around the age of five, other worlds and times, magic and mystery have fascinated her. Consequently, her favourite subjects at school were History, English and Latin. Out of school, she read fantasy and SF, crime, thrillers and historical fiction. Classics offered the best way of combining all these enthusiasms in a degree, so she studied Greek and Roman history and literature at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She also took up table top and live-action role playing and Aikido, a Japanese martial art.
After university, she worked in personnel management, got married and wrote her first complete novel. Publishers’ and agents’ responses can be summed by the letter she got saying 'there's nothing to distinguish this from the half dozen competent fantasies that land on my desk every week.' She learned how true this was as she later combined motherhood and bookselling by working part-time for Ottakars, and began attending the Crime and Mystery Weekends run at St Hilda's each summer. Friendly, accessible and often very famous authors offered advice and encouragement, most frequently telling that her publishers want 'the same but different.'
So Juliet created Livak, heroine of The Thief's Gamble, an independently minded female looking at a high fantasy world from new angles. After collecting a file of far more encouraging rejection slips, one unforgettable Friday, she got a phone call saying Orbit would like to publish her novel. In fact, could they make it a two book deal? The success of those books led to a further three Tales of Einarinn.
Juliet also writes diverse shorter fiction which has included tie-in stories for Doctor Who, Torchwood and Warhammer 40K as well as contributions to anthologies in the UK and the US. Working from time to time as a creative writing tutor she also reviews books for print and online magazines, notably Interzone and Albedo One. She regularly attends UK conventions with trips to Ireland, Europe and the US as and when the diary and funds permit. Somehow she fits all this around her family and vice versa.
