Jocelyn Kelley http://jocelynkelley.com Books: Kindred Spirits, March 2008 Lost in Shadow, July 2007 My Lady Knight, January 2007 A Moonlit Knight, May 2006 One Knight Stands, October 2005 A Knight Like No Other, March 2005

Jocelyn Kelley

Pseudonym: Jo Ann Ferguson.

In spite of being raised to play well with others, Jocelyn Kelley has always believed every woman needs to kick some butt sometimes. She learned this in third grade when the boys played soldiers and tried to relegate her to a non-combatant role. Soon she was taking the hill (or at least the playground tree) with them. Her assumption that women could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with men continued when she was offered a Direct Commission to the US Army and served as the first and only woman in her unit.

Jocelyn’s been writing "stories" all her life, and, when she decided to write for publication, she decided she wanted to write what she read—historical romance. Why historicals? She explains it as, "I want my heroine to be able to pick up a weapon and use it without having to fill out reams of paperwork as she would in contemporary times. She might not use that weapon, but I want to give her the option to do so." In other words, a kick-butt heroine.

She found the kick-butt heroines she wanted to write with The Ladies of St. Jude’s Abbey series that came to life in her mind while she was walking through Times Square in NYC and trying to devise an idea to share with her agent for a project. Since then, she’s had a great time learning about medieval weapons and more about self-defense. She’s been instructed by a fight choreographer who has worked for projects in Hollywood and on Broadway and recently attended the British School of Falconry to learn about handling hunting hawks. In her non-writing life, Jocelyn loves to play chess and enjoys music. She was a soloist with a local group of Up With People, but limits her singing now to when nobody else is around.

She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and three children.