As a child, C.P. Lesley thought everyone told stories while falling asleep. It never occurred to her that anyone would pay her for them, and for a long time, she was right—no one would. But after years of producing horrible prose, reading books about novel writing, and pestering hapless fellow-writers and friends to read her drafts, some of the advice stuck, and she finished The Not Exactly Scarlet Pimpernel, followed by The Golden Lynx, The Winged Horse, and The Swan Princess, books 1–3 in a five-part series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible. She is currently working on book 4, The Vermilion Bird, while fending off ideas for book 5, The Shattered Drum. When not thinking up new ways to torture her characters, she edits other people’s manuscripts, reads voraciously, maintains her website, and takes classes in classical ballet. That love of ballet also finds expression in her Tarkei Chronicles series, which so far consists ofDesert Flower and Kingdom of the Shades. Someday she plans to write a third Tarkei Chronicle, tentatively titled Corsair. She blogs regularly about history, novels, publishing, technology, and writing at http://blog.cplesley.com, posts that Goodreads picks up and displays after a short delay. And she hosts New Books in Historical Fiction, a channel in the New Books Network.