Christine Norris

Christine was born on Friday, August 13, 1971. She has always thought of Friday the 13^th as her lucky day.  She grew up in the small town of Sewell, in southern New Jersey, where she still lives today. Her mother was an English teacher who gave it up and worked at home as a seamstress to raise her three daughters, while her father worked for the US government. She has two younger sisters, which made the house busy and noisy for most of her childhood. There was always something going on – dance classes, sports practice, music lessons.

The arts run in her family. Her great-great grandfather was a stage manager in Philadelphia, and her great-grandfather held various stage crew jobs, traveling with the companies to such venues as the Palace Theater in New York City. Her grandmother was an artist and accomplished musician, and her mother also had a talent for musical instruments. Christine is all thumbs with instruments, unlike her middle sister, but likes to sing. In High School, she was in three musicals, the choir and the Vocale Ensemble.

After High School, she went to college to study theater. But after three years, she decided that it was more fun as a hobby. She was involved in several local theater groups. Her favorite type of performing was Children’s theater, because she could be as silly as she wanted and nobody said she was being unprofessional. After leaving college, Christine had several jobs. She worked in a pasta factory, a health club, and a five star hotel spa before deciding to go back to school. She enrolled part-time at Philadelphia Community College, where she took core classes for two years before transferring to Temple University.

She met her husband, John, in 1998. He is a volunteer fireman. She graduated Cum Laude from Temple in May of 2000 with a Bachelor of Science from the College of Education. Christine and John married, in a Renaissance themed wedding, in October of 2000. Their son was born in 2002. She often hides her identity as author in the guised of a mild-mannered elementary and middle school substitute teacher, a job that she loves and allows her to connect with and understand her readers.

She wishes she could say that she has been writing since she was small or something profound like that, but it’s just not true. She played around with writing on and off since high school, she didn’t pick up a pen and write seriously until 2001. Three years later, The Talisman of Zandria was finished.

Her favorite authors are Tamora Pierce, JK Rowling,  JRR Tolkien, Jane Yolen, Eoin Colfer, and Steven King, to name a few. She loves to read, sew, scrapbook, crochet and even makes her own candles.