Following the events of The Darkening, even Willow's own coven has turned against her, condemning her for saving Buffy from their evil phantom and for not protecting the other coven members as she promised them she would. Willow must find a way to restore herself to them, to reinforce her position of power, which is hanging in the balance. If the truth should get out -- that Willow fought the phantom because the ghost of Tara told her to -- it will lower her still further in their eyes. That is a risk she cannot afford to take. The time has come for big magic. Infallible magic. As Willow turns to the elements for protection, can Buffy and Co. overcome her -- without losing her forever...?
I was born back in the early days when black and white photographs were considered normal instead of artsy. As a child I always thought I'd grow up to be an artist, and I was was convinced I'd spend my life doing line drawings of long, leggy models like the ones in the daily newspapers. Life, however, did not cooperate: a foul-up in grammar school resulted in a transfer to a local high school instead of the technical, arts-heavy one I'd planned to attend.
Following that was a move that really made things start winding around. By the time I returned to Chicago for the second time in 1981, I'd worked as a waitress, a nurse's aide, a bookkeeper and gift shop cashier, an accounting clerk, and a secretary in everything from office furniture stores to a hotel to a journalism society. In 1981 I came back to my old job in a Chicago law firm and settled down in the Windy City for awhile. In 1982 I tried to write because my mother said "You could do this." The seed had still been planted, and I sold my first story in 1984. Since then I've written around a hundred stories, most of which have been or are scheduled to be published.
My first novel, AfterAge, was published in 1993 and was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. In 1995 my second solo novel, deadrush, was published, and it also was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, this time in the category of Superior Achievement in a novel. Final Impact, the third solo novel, was published in 1997, and won both the Chicago Women In Publishing's Award for Excellence in Adult Fiction and the "Unreal Worlds" Award for Best Horror Paperback of 1997 from the Rocky Mountain News. Since then I've published several more solo novels, Red Shadows (a follow-up to Final Impact), DeadTimes, and That's Not My Name, her first suspense novel. That's Not My Name, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Paleo, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Willow Files, Vol. 2 all won at the Illinois State level of the IWPA 2001 Mate E. Palmer Communications contest (two first place and one second place, respectively), plus I somehow swept all three awards of the Short Story category with "Ascension," "Divine Justice," and "Santa Alma." I've also written a number of media tie-in novels, including several Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels, Hellboy, Elektra, and Ultraviolet. Full info about all her books can be found on her website along with a lot of free excerpts.
I moved to my beloved Arizona in 2002 and currently work on historic Fort Huachuca. in southern Arizona. Numerically, I'm up to about twenty novels and one non-fiction book, with those never-ending plans for more. I love heat, Godiva chocolates, and Great Danes.
