About the Author

C.L. Denault is a young adult speculative fiction writer who loves dreaming up tales of adventure and intrigue. She prefers to go by Cary, as long as you don’t assume she’s a guy, and wishes the people who send her junk mail would get this through their heads.

 

Born and raised in northern Missouri, Cary had a traditional rural upbringing and might have been considered a regular farm kid, if not for a few odd quirks—like constantly having her nose buried in a book and teaching herself computer programming at the age of ten. She pestered her high school teachers with a million questions, watched an endless stream of sci-fi and horror, and carried around notebooks full of her scribbled attempts at stories (including her own adolescent version of Ghostbusters).

 

The programming quirk took over in college, where she graduated from the University of Central Missouri with honors and a degree in Computer Information Systems. She put aside her creative goals to focus on her family and career (though she never stopped asking questions and watching sci-fi) and considered writing as one of those things she’d try “later” in life.

 

Later came unexpectedly, when the condition of her special needs son prompted her to leave the workforce and become a stay-at-home mom. It wasn’t long before one of her children—who apparently thought not having a job meant she had scads of free time—challenged her with the crazy idea of writing a book. Intrigued, she accepted that challenge, dusted off her passion for writing, and went to work.

 

And the work paid off. You can find her short story "Cry of the Windwalker" lurking in the horror anthology Fairly Twisted Tales For A Horribly Ever After. Her novels Gambit, Mimic, and Gauntlet are the first in a sci-fi dystopian romance series, and her action-packed gothic werewolf tale, The Last Starling, released in December 2019. She has plans for many other books in a wide array of genres and is thrilled to be living out one of her childhood dreams (another was to visit an alien planet—she’s still working on that).

 

Cary spends most of her time researching, writing, and hanging out with family. You can find her in Illinois, usually in some obscure, shadowy corner of a hip coffeehouse . . . or at home, tearing up junk mail from those heartless advertisers who still think she’s a guy.

 

She loves to connect with people (especially those from other planets, dimensions, and the future). Just use the social media icons or the Contact form. Or a Stargate. Whichever is easiest.