The Snow Queen (Five Hundred Kingdoms Series #4) » (~)

Mercedes was born in Chicago on June 24, 1950. The very next day the Korean War was declared. It is hoped that there is no connection between the two events.

She was raised mostly in the northwestern corner of Indiana, attending grade school and high school in Highland, Indiana. She graduated from Purdue University in 1972 with a Bachelors of Science in biology. This, she soon learned, along with a paper hat and a name tag will qualify you to ask "would you like fries with that?" at a variety of fast-food locations.

After spending time in jobs ranging from artist's model to lab technician at the Mosquito Genetics Project to short-order cook, she took training and became a computer programmer. About this time she discovered science fiction conventions and the Society for Creative Anachronism, and began attending functions of both, more often in costume than not.

Mercedes had always written from her early teens, and developed this hobby by writing fan fiction for various amateur magazines. In the 1980s she took a job programming computers for a major airline, and as a consequence moved to Oklahoma, where she continued to write. At this time she met both Marion Zimmer Bradley (author of The Mists of Avalon) and .C. J. Cherryh, both of whom helped mentor her from the ranks of the amateur into those of the professional writers.

In 1985 her first book was published. In 1990 she met artist Larry Dixon at a small science fiction convention in Meridian, Mississippi, on a television interview organized by the convention. They began working together from that time on, and were married in Las Vegas at the Excalibur chapel by Merlin the Magician (akatheReverend Duckworth) in 1992.

They moved to their current home, the "second weirdest house in Oklahoma" also in 1992. She obtained her wildlife rehabilitators license and began rehabbing birds of prey; so far her patients have ranged from a hummingbird to a great blue heron, but most are American kestrels, red-tailed hawks, barred owls and great horned owls. She has many pet parrots, the smallest of which is a hand-raised peach-faced lovebird, and the largest of which is a blue-and-gold macaw.

Mercedes has over 50 books in print, and some of her foreign editions can be found in Russian, Czech, Polish, French, Italian and Japanese.

She has continued her hobby of costuming, although now she costumes Barbies and porcelain dolls as the characters from her books, usually sending these items to charity auctions with autographed copies of the relevant books. She also does art needlework and beadwork, sometimes combining these hobbies with her doll-making, usually sending these as gifts or to charity auctions, as well. She always has several of these projects going at any one time, because they give her the opportunity to think about her stories while her hands are busy. Her current projects are a planned series of "Gothic Fairy" dolls with hair of colors not found in nature.

A night owl by nature, Mercedes is generally found at the keyboard between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.

Aleksia, Queen of the Northern Lights, is mysterious, beautiful and widely known to have a heart of ice. No one would seek her wisdom except as a last resort. But when she's falsely accused of unleashing evil on nearby villages, she realizes there's an impostor out there far more heartless than she could ever be.

And when a young warrior following the Tradition disappears, leaving his sweetheart and mother to fear the worst, Aleksia's powers are needed as never before.

Now, on a journey through a realm of perpetual winter, it will take all her skills, a mother's faith and a little magic to face down an enemy more formidable than any she has ever known.…