C. Hope Clark was born and reared in the South, from Mississippi to South Carolina with a few stints in Alabama and Georgia. The granddaughter of a Mississippi cotton farmer, Hope holds a B.S. in Agriculture with honors from Clemson University and 25 years’ experience with the U. S. Department of Agriculture to include awards for her management, all of which enable her to talk the talk of Carolina Slade, the protagonist in most of her novels. Her love of writing, however, carried her up the ranks to the ability to retire young, and she left USDA to pen her stories and freelance. Lowcountry Bribe‘s won several awards to include finalist status of the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense sponsored by Romance Writers of America. The novel enjoyed semi-finalist status (top 100 out of 10,000) in the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. The book went on to win the 2012 Silver Falchion Award for Crime Fiction and the 2013 EPIC E-book Award for Best Mystery. Tidewater Murder and Palmetto Poison followed close on Lowcountry's heels in the Carolina Slade series. Hope's recently released a new series, beginning with Murder on Edisto, of the Edisto Island Mysteries, followed by Edisto Jinx, with Echoes of Edisto and Affairs of Edisto forthcoming in 2016 and 2017.. Hope is married to a 30-year veteran of federal law enforcement, a Senior Special Agent, now a contract investigator. They met on a bribery investigation within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the basis for the opening scene to Lowcountry Bribe. Hope and her special agent live on the rural banks of Lake Murray outside of Chapin, South Carolina, forever spinning tales on their back porch, bourbon and coke in hand, when not tending a loveable flock of Orpington and Dominiquer hens. She also currently manages FundsforWriters.com, a weekly newsletter service she founded that reaches almost 35,000 writers to include university professors, professional journalists and published mystery authors. Writer’s Digest has recognized the site in its annual 101 Best Web Sites for Writers for 16 years. She’s published in The Writer Magazine, Writer’s Digest, Chicken Soup, Next Step Magazine, College Bound Teen, Voices of Youth Advocates (VOYA), TURF Magazine, Landscape Management and other trade and online publications. She speaks at several writers’ conferences a year. Hope is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, EPIC, International Thriller Writers, SE Writers Assoc. and MENSA.