BIOGRAPHY

VIOLETTE MALAN

     Violette Malan lives in a nineteenth-century limestone farmhouse in southeastern Ontario with her husband, Paul Musselman and their cat, "Oro". Born in Canada, Violette's cultural background is half Spanish and half Polish, which makes it interesting at meal times. Violette has a PhD from York University in 18th-Century English Literature, but reports that most people don't hold it against her. She started reading fantasy and science fiction at the age of eight. Violette has been a book reviewer, and has written feature articles on genre writing and literature for the Kingston Whig Standard. She has worked as a teacher of creative writing (fantasy and science fiction), English as a second language, Spanish, beginner's French, and choreography for strippers. On occasion she's been an administrative assistant, and a carpenter's helper. Her most unusual job was translating letters between lovers, one of whom spoke only English, the other only Spanish.     

Violette is co-founder of the Scene of the Crime Festival on Wolfe Island, a single-day event focusing on Canadian crime writing, and celebrating the birthplace of Grant Allen, Canada's first crime writer. Violette is currently the president of the board, but in the past she's given the writing workshop, which is one of the festival's events, and was the original organizer and co-judge of The Wolfe Island Prize for first crime fiction, sponsored by the festival. With Therese Greenwood, Violette is the editor of Dead in the Water, an anthology of crime and mystery fiction set in and around Canada's bodies of water. The anthology was published by Rendezvous Press in Toronto in the spring of 2006. Violette's first short story "Brush Off" won the inaugural "Bony Pete" award at the Crime Writers of Canada Bloody Words Conference. Her mystery fiction has been published in the Canadian anthologies of the Ladies Killing Circle, in the noir anthology Crime Spree, and in the magazine Over My Dead Body. Her erotica has been published in Penthouse. Her fantasy novels are published by DAW. The latest, THE STORM WITCH, will be out in September of 2009.