First, since it’s good to be clear about this, Celia Lake is a pen name, but there’s a real person behind the books. Hello!
I’m in my 40s, and live and work in the Boston, Massachusetts metro area. I grew up here as the child of one British parent (my father), and one ‘grew up in the United Kingdom from the age of 2’ parent (my mother). I’ve had the chance to visit the UK multiple times as a child, and most recently as an adult in 2015.
I spend my days as a research librarian, and my library work definitely shapes my writing – and my own reading.
Odd notes from the current writing are most likely to turn up on Twitter, and I include links from the week’s writing research in my newsletter on a regular basis.
My early life
My childhood was basically full of watching BBC shows on tv (I was only allowed to watch public television) and reading classic school stories and pony books my father brought back from trips. (Enid Blyton, the Chalet School, and Jill’s Ponies were particular favourites.) I also loved comics from my grandmother who was by that time living on the southern English coast.
My father is also the one who introduced me to a life-long love of the Golden Age of mystery authors, especially Dorothy L. Sayers.
Being a librarian
As a librarian, I’ve worked in an independent high school and a small campus of a state university. These days I’m the librarian at a small research library that’s part of an educational non-profit. I love my job, which lets me help people with information that makes a big difference in their lives on a regular basis.
More than one person in my life has teased me about the fact I read anything that sits still long enough. They are absolutely right. I read widely in a range of genres, but my favourites are character-driven fantasy, romance with intelligent heroines (and thoughtful heroes), and historical mystery series. I’ve been particularly drawn to the 1920s for a long time, because of the massive changes that followed the Great War in all areas of society.
Writing as Celia Lake
It turns out I love writing books almost as much as I love reading them. I started writing the Mysterious Charms series in late 2017 (I wrote most of Outcrossing as a NaNoWriMo project, before going back, editing, and finishing it in February of 2018.) From there, I wrote more books, partly to see what I could commit to writing regularly. That turns out to be about a book every three months at my current length.
I turn out to be a person who writes a lot more when I write every day (even if a given day isn’t great writing). I spend time on the weekends and some of my vacation days editing and doing all the other things a self-published author has to keep track of (marketing, website, talking to my cover designer, Augusta Scarlett, and much more.)
Other than that, you can find me reading, chatting online with my friends, indulging in a little magic of my own, and being sat on by my cat, Astra. (Seen below.)
One final note
I write American English at work (and when that’s the best choice otherwise) but in my personal life, I swapped over to British spellings and word choice about eight years ago. (Before that, it was an odd mix of the two.) It’s a way to keep in touch with my ancestors on that side, plus I find it helps me think about what I’m saying and how I say it in ways I enjoy. My short bio is quite correct when it says I think the Oxford comma is best.