Meet Lisa Taylor, author of the "Shana Black" series

Hello Trestle fans! My name is Lisa Taylor, and I’m one of those starving artist types; a writer, to be precise.  Have I always, since my tiny little brain first recognized a word, wanted to be a writer? Heck no. In fact, a couple years ago I was about as far on the other end of the spectrum as I could get.

Out of high school, I went to college at the United States Military Academy at West Point.  There I earned a degree in physics while I trained to be a leader in the Army. Though I dreamt of making some earth shattering discovery that might tie the world we see together with the worlds we can’t, it was only a daydream, as much inspired by imagination as by science. I didn’t actually plan to be a physicist, because when one graduates from West Point, they must serve five years as an active duty officer in the U.S. Army; and my plan was to be in for life.  Even then I wrote short stories and worked on a novel, but to me it was only a hobby. It had been a hobby since I was nine years old.

Then real life hit. In my senior year I was diagnosed with a heart condition. Long story short, I graduated, but I was medically discharged from the Army. With a loan to pay and no job, I became a teaching assistant at the University of Kansas while I worked towards my Masters in physics. With all of my experience being either military or rooted in top secret government science projects…what else would I do?

Unfortunately, I’d never really planned to be a physicist. The more exposure I got to life in a lab, the more I realized that I should have chosen a different back up career. One night, I sat on the floor of my apartment, papers full of brain-bursting equations scattered before me, and I heard a ding at my computer. I had received a new comment on a short story I’d recently shared at a writing site online, and I grinned in elation. That’s when it hit me. Why am I not doing something I love?

So, against all advice, I left graduate school at the end of the semester to begin my writing career. Since then, I have published quite a few things, but the Shana Black Series is where all my experience meets writing. This story of a West Point Cadet gone secret agent is fictional, but I pour my experience into the world around her. This series gives a purpose to all the things I’ve done in my life up to this point, because I can share those experiences with my readers, and if you are already one of Shana’s faithful fans, then I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you’re not, well it’s your lucky day, because with Trestle Press’s BOGO sale, you can buy two Shana Black installments and get the other two free of charge!

My life has been full of adventure so far, and I don’t plan for that to end. To keep up with what I’m doing, you can follow me on Twitter, @BlackFire88, check out my website at http://www.creatingworldswithwords.com, or follow my blog at http://www.writersparty.com  I’m also on Facebook and pretty much all major social networking sites.

Thank you for listening to my rambling, and please know that I welcome questions, comments, or just plain old “hellos.” After all, without readers, what good would I be?