About Me
An avid fantasy reader, I write the kinds of books I love to read: richly imagined worlds populated by complex, memorable characters. I began writing this series under the last name Engelhardt but changed my name in 2025 to honor my mother. My writing career began in college when I wrote my first play. After graduating, I moved to Germany and continued writing while teaching ESL to business executives. Back in the United States, I taught ballroom dance and worked in retail but eventually decided that living in my parents’ attic was not sustainable and went to law school. After seventeen years as a lawyer and compliance officer in New York City, I left Wall Street to become a mediator and arbitrator. I now live in New Jersey with her family, where I'm working on the next Fifth Mage War installment.
About the Series
The Fifth Mage War is epic fantasy with an urban twist. I’ve used classical fantasy elements (sirens, mages, fae, vampires, were-jaguars, etc.), but set the story in the modern world.
Because I love imagining myself in the stories I read, I designed that kind of world for my readers. In my books, magic is simply a part of everyone’s lives: while there are airplanes and computers just like we have them today, the people in Australia and Europe travel by flying carpet instead of cars, and air conditioners are magical appliances.
My favorite stories are character-centric, and so my epic focuses on the five members of the Bant family who are at the center of a world-shattering conflict. While the series title promises a war (and war you shall have!), the story begins before any shots are fired so that readers can discover how the main characters wind up on opposing sides.
The first two books feature medical and magical discoveries, political intrigue, physical transformation, and moral dilemmas. There are no true “villains,” and all my characters have flaws. I tried to build a balanced world, where all power comes with an off-setting disability. It's a story of people put in impossible positions, forced to make difficult decisions that affect themselves, their family and the world.
