Shelley Bates

Whether typing search warrants and making undercover phone
calls for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or editing
marketing material for the high-tech industry in Silicon
Valley, Shelley Bates has found that everyone has a story.
Most people have stopped telling her theirs in case she
puts them in her books.


Shelley has a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University
of California at Santa Cruz and an M.A. in Writing Popular
Fiction from Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania. She
sold her master's thesis to Harlequin after she graduated
in 2002, and it subsequently became a double finalist in
the 2004 National Readers Choice Awards.


Grounds to Believe, her debut novel from Steeple Hill Books
and the first book in her Elect Trilogy, won the
prestigious RITA Award for Best Inspirational Novel of the
year from the Romance Writers of America in 2005. The
second book in the trilogy, Pocketful of Pearls, is an
August 2005 release from Warner Faith, and the last book, A
Sounding Brass, will be out in August 2006.


She's a freelance editor in the high-tech industry in
Silicon Valley, where there is plenty of scope for fiction.
Between books, Shelley enjoys playing the piano and Celtic
harp, making historical costumes, and spoiling her chickens
rotten.