A. Claire Everward takes the world far too seriously. She is passionate and sensitive to her surroundings and tends to fight for what she believes in. She is direct, although she tries not to be, at least not always. She leads a quiet life and prefers to spend time with her characters, and for her escaping into writing is always the best refuge. She would say it maintains her sanity but her sister Kate says that sanity tends to be overrated.Claire spent years away from home getting a master’s degree in aerospace engineering, with a risk management specialty. During that time, she lived in the university, surrounded by forested hills and too much silence, so to keep away the boredom she also took on an MBA, and now she feels ridiculously over-educated.She tried to work in her field, she really did, and even put her education to good use in the finance field. But eventually her love for writing took over, and she decided to leave it all and move to the world of her imagination. Her characters had a lot to do with that–they had lived in her mind, waiting patiently for her to be ready, for too long, they felt, and so they finally decided enough is enough and took over. And Claire didn’t put up that much of a resistance. She has always loved to read, but writing, that’s a whole new world she soon knew she could never give up.Claire lives with her two cats, Mary Boleyn who is much smarter than her and who likes to sit on her laptop just when she wants to write, otherwise, she starts throwing stuff off the desk, and Henry VIII who loves to jump on top of the kitchen cabinets and scream at the ceiling. Especially at night.Nowadays, when she’s not rudely peeping into the lives of her characters, or having in-depth conversations with them, which she does tend to do quite often, Claire actually manages to do some writing. The First is only the first of her novels, with a sequel on its way and a whole new series to follow.