Shannon K. Butcher (edit name/settings)

A lot of authors knew they wanted to write books from the time they were little. Their heads were full of fanciful stories that they yearned to commit to paper with a passion that only grew as they did. They spent hours reading fiction, voraciously absorbing every kind of story they could get their hands on.

Shannon was not one of them.

When she was little, she wanted to be a daddy. When she learned the anatomical improbability of that happening, she decided instead to become what her dad was: an Industrial Engineer. So that’s what she did. She never once changed majors or veered from her path. After she graduated, she went to work for a big telecom company earning a steady paycheck while her husband pursued his dream to become a published author.

For those of you who might not know, Shannon's husband is Jim Butcher, fantasy and sci-fi author extraordinaire. She learned to write in an effort to help him improve his own work and as soon as she discovered that writing was more a learned skill than a natural talent she knew she had to give it a try. She couldn’t resist the challenge of taking the pieces of a story apart and putting them back together again. It’s the kind of puzzle that made her want to be an engineer to begin with – to learn how things work and why. She thought she’d write the same kind of thing Jim did, but then she picked up her first romance in 1998 and was hooked. Somehow, stories about how two people come to love each other made everything else seem shallow in comparison. Maybe it was just her hormones talking, but whatever it was, it was loud, so she listened and she started writing romances. She wrote great heaping piles of suckfulness – like most new writers – but eventually her work sucked less and hopefully that trend will continue as she learns more. Heaven knows she have a great teacher. (Thanks, Jim.)

A family of geeks to the core, the Butchers live in Independence, Missouri, with their son and a dog who is only one four-foot stick away from being a dust mop.