Not all monsters are fictional.In an alternate 1851, Edgar Allan Poe has finally overcome his demons. Married to his childhood sweetheart Elmira and with a successful writing career, he's now touring England with his popular lecture series. But Poe's notoriously bad luck returns with a vengeance in Oxford, leaving him implicated in the gory murder of a chambermaid.Alone and desperate, he must recruit a shy young undergraduate named Charles Dodgson (soon to be known as Lewis Carroll) to help him clear his name. Can this most unlikely pair of detectives track down the killer before Poe hangs for a crime he didn't commit? Melanie Fletcher is an expatriate Chicagoan who currently lives in North Dallas with her husband the Bodacious Brit™ and their four fabulous furbags JJ, Jordan, Jessica, and Jeremy (yes, they were following a theme, moving along now).When not herding cats, she turns into SF Writer Girl, and has the SFWA Active membership card to prove it. But wait -- she doesn't just write specfic. She also works as a technical writer, web designer and graphic artist, and produces the comedy podcast Don't Quit Your Day Job: The Podcast with Jerry J. Davis, Patrick Gaik and Stacy the News Girl. In fact, if you want to tally up all the things Melanie can do, she can write, edit, paint, sing, dance, act, fence, play a, number of instruments, build dollhouses, knit and crochet, quilt, do needlepoint, cross stitch and crewelwork, moderate panels, edit podcasts and videocasts, fix cars, perform simple plumbing and electrical work, perform somewhat more complex carpentry, make a damn good deep dish pizza from scratch, and marry people.When she refers to herself as a Renaissance Broad, she's not kidding.
