Spark

Jamie Maddox is worried about her grip on reality. Has her consciousness really been transported back to 1560, landing in the body of Blanche Nottingham? Not good, since Blanche, a lady-in-waiting for Queen Elizabeth I, is plotting a murder. The other possibility that Jamie faces? She’s had a psychotic break that has trapped her in an Elizabethan fantasy while another personality?let’s call her Blanche?has taken control of Jamie’s life and is jeopardizing everything.

Jamie is repeatedly zapped back and forth between the present and 1560 (or in and out of that twisted fantasy.) Betrayal, murder, thunderstorms, and two doctors complicate everything as Jamie and Blanche battle to control Jamie’s body. Just as Jamie is running out of both hope and time, help?and love?come from a most unexpected place.

Catherine Friend and her partner of over twenty-five years raise sheep, ducks, and goats on their southeastern Minnesota farm. Her memoir, Hit by a Farm: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn, was an Insightout Bookclub bestseller and chronicles what happened to her relationship and her writing career when she agreed to help her partner start the farm. (It has a happy ending.) Hit by a Farm won a 2007 GCLS award and was a finalist for a 2006 Lambda Literary Award. Catherine has also written six books for children and was awarded a 2007 Loft/McKnight Fellowship in Children's Literature.

Catherine's interests range from writing, to reading about writing, to talking about writing, all the way to worrying about not writing. She was an economist, a project manager for a
technical writing firm, taught writing for ten years, edited novels, and has taken some very odd jobs to avoid returning to the corporate world. In her spare time she plays the piano, paints, and hangs out with her partner, who makes her laugh every day.