What You May or May Not Already Know About

Riley Kilmore:

 

Riley Kilmore was once so desperate to run away and join the circus that she auditioned in three different states for a spot in Ringling Brothers’ Clown College in Sarasota, Florida. When being a clown didn’t pan out, she took the next logical step and became a cop—one of the first women police officers in Lancaster Co., Pennsylvania.

A 20-year veteran of the fire service, Kilmore has worn many hats. She’s been a homeschool mom, an actor, a lifeguard, a forklift operator, a dancer, and once worked in a nuclear laboratory. After sailing around the world aboard the SS Universe, courtesy of a scholarship with the Semester at Sea Program, she earned her BA in Theatre Performance and (eventually) her MFA in Writing Popular Fiction, both from Seton Hill University.

In the early daze of the Interwebz, Kilmore was a columnist and contributing editor for the science fiction/fantasy webzine, Illuminata. Her fiction first appeared nationally in GRIT and in several literary journals (Lynx Eye, Cogzine, Eye Contact). Today her work can be found in numerous anthologies.

Kilmore is currently writing novels and seeking enthusiastic literary representation for her YA/crossover space-set family adventure (think: The Swiss Family Robinson meets Star Wars). Scuttlebutt has it an historic romcom (mid-19^th century American West) is also nearing completion.

Meanwhile, her plucky stem-centric middle grade fantasies (The Oldenshire Series) are available now from Wild Ink Publishing–think Lewis Carroll and Lemony Snicket collaborate on a retelling of Aesop’s Androcles and the Lion, and Oliver Twist meets Jumanji.

In her youth, Kilmore studied in France, leaped from an airplane or two, and earned the dubious distinction of being named runner-up in the Lititz, PA Chicken Corn Soup Queen competition.

She and her husband of 38 years (who once traveled together to Ukraine on an adoption misadventure) now live amid the sequestered hills of southcentral PA, where they’ve cared for a multitude of critters—mostly of the four-legged variety, now that their six kids have flown the coop.