Ellen L. Ekstrom is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area and was educated locally. She holds a bachelor’s degree in theological studies and her area of concentration is Christian Mythos, also known as church history, with a sub-specialty in Christian Social Ethics, for both of which she took honors. Until August of 2016, Ellen served as the parish deacon at The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Berkeley, California. Ordained to the diaconate in 2002, she is a deacon in the Episcopal Church. Ellen has been fascinated by all things medieval since childhood and is now studying Late Anglo-Saxon England in preparation for two forthcoming novels, Swannsaeld, and The Sometime Queen. The genres Ellen prefers to work in are fantasy/historical: her first novel was The Legacy, a tale of fourteenth-century Florence and Tuscany, followed by her retelling of the St. George and the Dragon legend, Armor of Light, and St. Edmund Wood, an homage to the stories of Thomas Hardy and the Bronte sisters. Once in a while she delves into matters of the modern heart, as evidenced by her novels in the Midwinter Sonata series and her award-winning book, What She Wished For... a Cautionary Tale. Just as a painter has many subjects to bring to a canvas, Ellen believes that there are many stories to tell and to limit oneself to a niche isn’t the way she lives and thinks.