Seanan McGuire was born January 5, 1978 in Martinez CA. She studied folklore and herpetology – ‘‘folktales and snakes’’ – at the University of California, Berkeley. She has worked as a phone sex operator, a technical support engineer, an exotic animal rescuer, and a process engineer for communications company SBC, but in recent years has worked as a quality assurance engineer for a non-profit. McGuire is a relatively new writer,