Magdalena Zschokke, born in Switzerland, escaped the landlocked existence by signing on as crew on a sailboat crossing the Pacific. 12 years, a 100ton captain's licence and some 50,000 miles later, she settled in Santa Cruz. A winner of the 1991 Astraea National Foundation's Emerging Fiction Writers' award, she has a Ph.D. from the University of California and is a full time fiction writer when she isn't teaching in the California prison system or running the harbor ferry to pay the rent.

Books:

• Windswept, New Victoria Publishers, Norwich VT, 1996
• Salt Rock Mysteries: New Victoria, 2000
• Das Geheimnis des Salzfelsens, Kroesus Verlag, Zurich, 2001
• Fulcrum, www.authorhouse.com, 2001
• Delayed Paradise, Windstorm Publisher, Port Orchard, WA, fall 2006