Ellen Kirschman

She has been a police and public safety psychologist for thirty-plus years, before she had any gray hair. Her work with first responders has taken her to four countries and twenty-two states. She has won several awards and in 2014 she was honored to receive the California Psychological Association's award for distinguished contribution to psychology. She spends her time writing, teaching, and volunteering as a clinician at the West Coast Post Trauma Retreat for first responders (see the links page). I Love a Cop: What Police Families Need to Know was my first book and, to date, it has sold more than 100,000 copies. It's available in Chinese and in Czech. I Love a Fire Fighter: What the Family Needs to Know came next, prompted by the tragic events of September 11th. Following that she wrote Counseling Cops: What Clinicians Need to Know, third in the "need to know" series, with Mark Kamena and Joel Fay, both of whom are retired cops. Burying Ben, my first-ever mystery featuring police psychologist Dr. Dot Meyerhoff, received first prize for the not-yet-in-print novel from the Public Safety Writers Association. My second mystery The Right Wrong Thing will be available in October 2015. Writing fiction is a new skill for her. She used to think that making things up would be easier than writing non-fiction. What a delusion! Creating a story that captures the reader's attention from page one is a tricky business. On a more personal note, she live in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, who is a photographer (he took the photos for all her books) and retired remodeling contractor. In her spare time she travels, cooks, take water aerobics classes and occasionally plunks away on her ukelele.