Tilia Horton spent eleven years as a professional tattoo artist, until one fateful night in a Cambodian pub, a woman wearing a gold suit approached her and said, "The time has come."
 
Tilia didn't know exactly what she meant, but she stood, said goodbye to her friends and followed the woman into the jungle, where, in a series of Kung Fu-movie-like scenes of discipline and devotion, the woman broke Tilia down and built her back up in a fresh incarnation as a writer.
 
Horton has lived in many cities, but has spent the most time on the north shore of Auckland, New Zealand, in Prague, Czech Republic (a city she still thinks of when someone says the word 'home'), and in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Although she loves being such a nomad, she also longs for a life stable enough to allow her to adopt a dog (or cat). She gets very nervous when called upon to write about herself and would much rather stick to describing the characters who use her head as a camp site.