Tina Gower was born and raised in Siskiyou County, California, where cows outnumber people. In the early mornings before school, Tina fed her dairy cow and fantasized about the characters in books. Some nights she would help her mother irrigate and stare into the starry sky imagining life on other planets-while her mother patiently reminded her to point the flashlight back to the task at hand.

Tina married her high school sweetheart and settled in Chico, California. They immediately noticed the absence of the Milky Way in the glow of city lights and vowed to visit their rural roots often so their children could experience the majesty of an unfettered starlit sky.

Tina graduated with an MA in school psychology and counseling, studied in London (where you also can't see the Milky Way), trained guide dogs for the blind and published nonfiction articles and stories under another name. She worked for several schools in the area before staying at home to write and raise her own children.

Tina and her husband pack up the kids and head north to their hometown as often as they can. Late at night you'll find them sitting on the bumper of a rusted blue Chevy staring at the stars and dreaming about the future.

Tina has won the Writers of the Future, the Romance Writers of American's Daphne du Maurier Award, and was a 2015 Finalist for the Romance Writers of America Golden Heart. She is represented by Rebecca Strauss at DeFiore and Company. Her fiction has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Galaxy's Edge, Black Denim Lit, UFO4, Diabolical Plots, Ares Magazine, and more. You can visit her on her blog: www.smashedpicketfences.com where she tells more stories, some of which might be true.