Ila Campbell (pronounced EYE-la) is actually the name of the Jennifer Smith’s grandmother, but “don’t ask me how many times I’ve been denied passports or had the wrong medication given to me in the hospital because my name is so common. Since I’m writing romances set in Scotland, it only seemed right to borrow her name. She’s the Scottish connection in the family, and it’s such a lovely name.”

Jennifer always knew she would write someday but was distracted by all her other hobbies. She paints, draws, does batik, makes Korean traditional paper crafts and practices Celtic ink drawings in addition to reading voraciously.

While studying history in college, she spent a year and a half at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, where she wrote her senior thesis on the controversy surrounding Robert the Bruce’s claim to the throne. To pay for her traveling habit, Jennifer earned an M.A. in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), which has had her living in Malaysia, New Mexico and Korea. She has visited a dozen other countries as well.

She is currently a professor at a prestigious women's university in Korea, where she writes her historicals. “Starting a novel was really a way to keep from going insane. The number of historical novels available here in English is fairly small, and when I became pregnant I knew I needed a hobby that didn’t involve art that could be crumpled or small knives--so I turned to the book I’d always wanted to write.”

Jennifer is a native of Dimondale, Michigan, but is living in Seoul, Korea for the foreseeable future with her husband and two children.

Read an excerpt from By the Blade.