Author Natalie J. Case | Walnut Creek, California

Jul 22

Jul 22 Natalie J. Case

Author biography

An avid reader since kindergarten, Natalie had read her way through the children's and young adult section of the library by nine years old, and during the summer spent most of her days scouring the library for something new to read. When the Librarian handed her The Hobbit the summer before she turned ten, thinking it would be enough to keep the girl out of the library for a few days at least, a whole new world opened up. Natalie devoured the tome and returned it to the library the very next day, wanting to know that there was more like it.

The frustrated librarian took her by the hand, and mumbling something about Natalie’s parents not liking what was about to happen, escorted the wide eyed reader into the part of the library that housed the Sci-fi and Fantasy collections. There are rumors that the brave girl marched in and never emerged again.

By twelve, Natalie had devoured titles from Tolkien, Heinlein, Asimov and discovered Katherine Kurtz's work. But, she was no longer content just to read. While she had been telling stories and making up characters her whole life, she began writing in earnest then, short stories and poetry for the most part. Her first attempt at a novel came when she was only fourteen, hand written on notebook paper. It was the definition of very not good, but she didn’t let that deter her.

For Christmas every year, she would give her parents collections of short stories and poetry she had written throughout the year, and it was in those collections where the character of Amara was born and the very first vestiges of the novel "Forever" came to be. Beginning in 1984, every Christmas collection through to when she stopped doing them contained a story from Amara's life, though she didn’t even have a name then.

As often happens when dreams and reality collide, Natalie ended up letting writing take a back seat to earning a living, and found herself in the world of data analysis following a move from the east coast to El Paso, Texas. Nights and weekends, she worked at making all of those short stories into a novel.

Another move brought her to California where she worked on getting a Bachelor's Degree in business and continuing to pursue a career built on numbers. She found, however, that writing duties seemed to follow her in every job, and eventually she abandoned numbers all together to become a technical writer.

Forever was not her first completed book, but the first one she felt had any value. She honed it, and then put it away for a few years, wanting some distance before attempting any editing. During those years, she wrote a lot, and at any given time, she has two or three stories in progress.

With a love of vampires and other paranormal types, Natalie infuses her fiction with magic and mythological beings, and explores the sometimes vanishing line between good and evil. Natalie makes her home in Walnut Creek, California with her two cats, Morrigan and Freya, and occasionally a stray cat she calls Artemis.