K. D. Keenan

For her sixth birthday, K. D. Keenan received a human skull from her grandfather. She was thrilled, especially because her mother was jealous. Her mother had been an archeologist, excavating in Arizona, New Mexico, the Yucatan and Guatemala in the 1930's, and Keenan's early life was enriched by the tales of her mother hacking her way through the jungle with a machete, or confronting a deadly fer-de-lance snake on the side of an un-excavated Mayan pyramid.Keenan has always been a voracious reader. Having worked through her grandparents' extensive library of Victorian children's literature, she began reading fantasy and science fiction at the age of nine-a move that curbed her tendency to write with a mid-Nineteenth Century flair that was never really appreciated by her English teachers.Keenan earned her living as a writer and public relations expert in Silicon Valley, the setting for her first novel, "The Obsidian Mirror." The first book in a trilogy, "The Obsidian Mirror" tells the tale of Sierra, a Silicon Valley PR executive whose life takes a turn for the weird when a fast-talking coyote appears on her doorstep and plunges her into a whirlwind of hijacked technology, ancient evil, and environmental threat. "Fire in the Ocean" picks up Sierra's story as she embarks on a tropical vacation but instead encounters the ancient magic of the "isle of sorcerers" as she fights to protect the precious natural environment of Molokai'i. "Lords of the Night," set in pre-Columbian Yucatan, concludes Sierra's adventures as she launches a quest to find her missing fiancé. She finds him-and finds something else altogether.