LeAnn Neal Reilly graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a master’s degree in professional writing. Along the way, she majored briefly in chemistry, served as opinion editor and then editor of her college newspaper, and interned for an international design firm. After graduate school, LeAnn worked first for a small multimedia startup and then a computer science research group. At the startup, she spent her time writing user manuals and scripts for multimedia software used to train railroad engineers.

While writing among geeks, LeAnn became enamored and decided to take one home for herself. After getting married and starting a family, she returned to her adolescent daydreams of writing novels. She spent years writing in an office not much better than an unfinished closet before publishing The Mermaid’s Pendant, a reimagining of The Little Mermaid that The Midwest Book Review describes as "a beautifully crafted fantasy that shows much symbolism and wisdom." LeAnn lives outside Boston with one husband, three children, a dog named Hobbes (after Calvin &), and a cat named Attila. Saint Sebastian’s Head is her second novel.

1. She wrote an opinion column for her college newspaper emulating the style of Pulitzer-winning Chicago columnist Mike Royko. Her fictional alter ego drank outrageous coffee drinks instead of hanging out in a bar conversing with Slats Grobnik.
2. She eats dark chocolate every day with a cup of tea or coffee.
3. She beat a CS professor, a CS staff programmer, and two or three CS grad students at the logic game SET. She quit while ahead.
4. Her first query letter for an illustrated fairy tale was sent when she was eight by her big brother. As she recalls, it was about a princess enchanted as a flower who waited for a prince to rescue her. Needless to say, that's when LeAnn got her first rejection.
5. She home schools three children, which explains why she's a bit dazed most of the time.
6. Her secret reading vice is romance novels. She loves YA novels, classics, and historical fiction. She is also reading her way through history to make up for her poor education.
7. Her biggest fear: public speaking. No, imagining everyone in their underwear does NOT help.
8. She's waited tables, something she thinks EVERYONE should do.
9. Biggest peeve: unflushed toilets. Biggest perpetrators of this heinous crime: her kids.
10. Her favorite authors: Shakespeare and Jane Austen. If she had only three books to take with her on a desert island, her copy of Shakespeare's complete works and a collection of Austen's novels would make the cut.