Frances Mary Hendry

Frances Hendry lives in a small town on the shore of the Moray Firth in Scotland, with an invisible Siamese cat.

She's a bookoholic, with usually four or five books on the go simultaneously in different rooms. She enjoys reading history, at least until men started to wear trousers. As a romantic, she loves fantasy books, the sword'n'sorcery kind, and adventure. But she dislikes both soppy romance and sadism, though there always seems to be a fair bit of both love and violence in her books - maybe just because some of her books are about exciting historical times and events, fairly accurate in the facts with imaginary people slotted in.

As an English teacher for many years, she learned what bits of a book her pupils skipped reading, and takes care not to write like that. Her books are mostly, to her annoyance, listed as for young adults; yes, some are for youngsters, but they're not childish. She says she writes for anybody who can read. Her first two fan letters were from a boy of 8 and a man of 94, so 'young adults' covers a fair bit of ground.

Both her first 2 books won awards from the Scottish Arts Council, and a later one was chosen by New York Public Libraries as one of its best 100 books. So she must be doing something right.