The Authors

The Lost Scribes

(Left to Right: Mary Ruth Pursselley, H.A. Titus, Elyn W. Marshe)

Mary Ruth Pursselley grew up on an Ozarks beef cattle ranch, where she still lives and works with her awesome family, a pack of dogs, a flock of chickens, a herd of cows, and a horse. She started writing stories at age 6, and by age 14 had the idea for her first novel—a cliché and melodramatic work that never made it to publication (thank Heaven). The ideas haven’t stopped coming since.

Today Mary works as a violin teacher, and spends every spare minute working on her many writing projects in various genres of speculative fiction including epic fantasy, sci-fi, and of course, steampunk.

Connect with Mary Pursselley:
The Writer's Lair (personal blog)

Pinterest
Email: editor (dot) thewriterslair (at) gmail (dot) com

H. A. Titus, a self-admitted word nerd, lives on the shores of Lake Superior with her meteorologist husband. She lives most of the day in an imaginary land or with her nose stuck in a book. Occasionally her husband manages to pull her into the real world long enough for an exciting adventure. She began writing at age 8. At age 12, she discovered The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, became a fantasy nerd, and never looked back. She currently writes stories set in epic fantasy, science fiction, and steampunk worlds.

Connect with H. A. Titus:
Facebook
Google+
Personal writing blog
Book reviews blog
Twitter
Email: skribblegurl at gmail dot com (replace "at" with "@" and "dot" with ".")

Elyn W. Marshe began telling stories to her siblings at a young age—for a time, she had them convinced that, every night, a giant dove would fly in through her window and carry her off to Fairyland. These days, she’s moved on a bit, and has most of the world convinced that she can write good stories. Published thrice, and having won several recent prizes for her writing, Elyn is also serving as an editorial intern while she earns her bachelor’s degree in English. She currently resides at a college inhabited by a phantom in the theater, a hunchback in the bell tower, pixies in the woods, and a creature named Larry. No one knows where he came from. Yet.

Connect with Elyn:
Personal blog
Book review blog

The History of the Lost Scribes

      At the ages of 16 and 17, respectively, H.A. Titus (Heather Smith at that time) and Mary Pursselley had never had the opportunity to become more than casual acquaintances who knew each other through their shared homeschool group. When a conversation between their mothers led to the realization that they were both writers, however, they decided it was time to take fate in hand and make the opportunity.
      A week later they were inseparable. Within a few months they were working on a co-authored fantasy novel together - a project which included hours of conversations that left bystanders speechless and disoriented, brainstorming sessions that leveled city blocks, midnight phone calls and emails, 'sleep'overs consisting of all-night writing marathons, and, they'll admit, a few arguments.
      A couple of years down the road, Mary's mother told her that she had met another mother (also through the homeschool group) whose oldest daughter was a writer, and that Mary should meet her. The daughter turned out to be none other than author Elyn W. Marshe.
      Once again, it didn't take long for a writers' bond to develop, and within a week the homeschool grad writing duo had become a threesome. With their collective creative powers exponentially increased, they moved up from leveling city blocks to a goal of world domination.
      Times started changing, though, and a relatively short while later Heather was married and living in Michigan, Mary was moving in with her grandmother, a dementia patient, as her caretaker, and Elyn was going off to college. But although the weekly writers' meetings had come to an end, the phone calls and emails kept going.
      It was Heather who first suggested a novel co-authored by all three of them. Coincidentally, all three of the girls had independently discovered the steampunk genre within the last few weeks, so they took it as a sign and decided to make their co-authored project a steampunk novel.
      "The Lost Scribes" was originally thrown onto the table as a possible novel title, but as the story developed the girls realized that it didn't fit. So, they decided to make "The Lost Scribes" their group name, and set out to become the first Christian steampunk writers' guild in existence. To their knowledge, they are.
      Today, though busy with life and still separated by distance, the Lost Scribes keep in touch via lots of emails and the occasional DCC - code for "Dreaded Conference Call" - while working on whatever their latest project is. Once in a while they even manage to get together in person over holidays and summer vacations, but the local librarians and police usually try to prevent such incidents under pretenses such as "keeping the world safe for democracy and vampire fiction", which is, of course, absurd. The Lost Scribes deny all allegations of their involvement with the Burn Vampire Books to Warm the Homeless campaign. That business with the oil drum under the overpass was a simple misunderstanding to which Officer Anderson was clearly overreacting.