Joan Lennon

(born February 1953 - ) - Canada, now Newport-on-Tay, Fife

Joan Lennon grew up in Canada and arrived in Scotland in 1978. After a year on a Hebridean island, she knew she'd come to the right place. She used to think she'd travelled quite a lot in her cool youth, but now that her children have started going off on fabulously exciting gap years to exotic places like China and Madagascar and Tanzania and South Africa and Borneo, she's gone a bit quiet on that. She has had the mandatory quirky low-paid jobs - ice-cream sundae constructor (at which she excelled), putz frau at the Munich Olympics (gut genug), ballet-class pianist (very, very poor), a computer operator in the days when they needed a whole separate room ...

These days, she divides her time between a husband, four sons, a cat, a collection of piano pupils - and writing. Her first big fat fantasy Questors was published in 2007. The Seventh Tide starts with the land- and seascape of the west coast of Scotland and then adds shape-shifters, soul-sucking kelpies, talking ferrets and an underwater Glasgow of the 24th century. A different landscape inspired The Wickit Chronicles - that of the vast swampy fens of medieval England. Ely Plot, Fen Gold, Ice Road and Witch Bell tell the adventures of the orphan Pip and the living, breathing, swimming stone gargoyle, Perfect. And for younger readers, there is the series Tales from the Keep, the first of which is titled The Ferret Princess, introducing a feisty heroine and a crowd of overexcited four-legged assistants.

Joan lives in Fife and has never reconsidered her decision all those years ago.