Tessa Marlowe fell in love with monsters at nine years old, watching creature features on a garage-sale VCR in Eugene, Oregon, and rooting for the wrong side every single time. She has been correcting that injustice professionally ever since.

Before writing romance, Tessa spent eleven years managing a tabletop-gaming shop in Portland, where she ran weekly campaigns, painted several hundred miniatures, and learned everything she knows about courtship from watching players fall for each other over dice. It was behind that counter — listening to customers argue about whether an orc could be a paladin — that she started writing the story that became The Orcs of Duskmire. (For the record: yes. Obviously.)

Her books are for readers who skip past the brooding billionaires looking for someone with tusks: enormous, scarred, devoted heroes; heroines with ledgers, lockpicks, and limits; small-town warmth with the heat turned all the way up; and happily-ever-afters signed, witnessed, and forged in iron.

Tessa still lives in Portland with her partner, Sam, an unreasonable number of dice, and three cats named Grendel, Mothman, and Keith. She believes every monster deserves a love story and every love story deserves a forge scene.