Barbara Hambly's life experiences are as varied as her fiction. The ex-model, clerk, high school teacher, black belt karate instructor, and technical writer enjoys dancing, painting, studying historical and fantasy costuming, and carpentry--and she occasionally uses these varied activities as fodder for her writing. While Hambly's novels are primarily sword-and-sorcery fantasies, she also writes in a variety of other genres--everything from vampire stories to science fiction; recently she has enjoyed success with historical mysteries such as the popular Free Man of Color and Fever Season, and she has created novelizations based on the characters in television shows like Beauty and the Beast and Star Trek.

Hambly, who has served as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, has said that she feels the urge to write is something that's inherent. "I think a person is a writer if they HAVE to write," she said during a July...