Susan Kaye Quinn grew up in California, where she wrote snippets of stories and passed them to her friends during class. Her teachers pretended not to notice and only confiscated her stories a couple times.

She left writing behind to pursue a bunch of engineering degrees (B.S. Aerospace Engineering, M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering) and work everywhere from NASA to NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) to a little Venice Beach restaurant called The Green Bean (she was the bookkeeper). She has designed aircraft engines, studied global warming, and held elected office (as a school board member). Now that she writes novels, her business card says "Rocket Scientist and Author," and she doesn't have to sneak her notes anymore.

From Amazon.com

Which is too bad.

All that engineering comes in handy when dreaming up dystopian future worlds or mixing science with fantasy to conjure slightly plausible inventions. For her stories, of course. Just ignore that stuff in the basement.

Her middle grade boys clamor for more middle grade books with magic and gadgets and less teen novels with kissing. Unfortunately for them, she enjoys writing both.

Susan writes from the Chicago suburbs with her three boys, two cats, and one husband. Which, it turns out, is exactly as much as she can handle.

Check out Susan's author website (www.susankayequinn.com) for more information about her books, and subscribe to her newsletter (http://bit.ly/SubscribeToSusansNewsletter) to be notified of upcoming releases.