Author T. Novan, has been writing his entire life. His love of the craft and his desire to master the art started young, when he won a community creative writing contest at the age of 8 with a short story about how mankind would settle future disputes over a chessboard. 40 years later, he realized that after working a variety of jobs including auto mechanic, police officer and even chimpanzee keeper, it was time to return to the one thing that he simply cannot deny – his love of and need to write.

He is married, with one daughter and three grandchildren. He currently lives about 20 minutes outside of Richmond, Virginia, on the grounds of the Confederate headquarters of Battle of Cold Harbor. A “gentleman farmer” with a small family homestead, he tends his flock of chickens and his miniature donkey, and writes.

After being in semi-retirement from the writing world for nearly a decade, T.N. has re-emerged with the re-release of classic titles like Madam President, First Lady and Words Heard in Silence (Book 1 of the Redmond Family Saga). He and his wife, Taylor Rickard, are actively working on the next two books in the Saga. Paths of Peace, Book 2, will be released in time for Christmas of 2015, and Enemies in the Gates (Book 3) will be released in January/February of 2016.

Taylor Rickard has an unusual background. She was raised in the south by a grandmother whose love of Southern history and traditions was instilled in her from an early age. Her grandmother’s dreams for her life included being presented at the St. Cecilia’s Cotillion, marriage to a nice boy from the Citadel, and a life of doing research for the Huguenot Society of South Carolina and raising lovely little Children of the Confederacy. That didn’t happen. She grew up to have multiple careers in her life.

She has been a chef, a television producer/director and an information technology architect. But it was that love and knowledge of all things southern that lead her and her partner, T. Novan to begin what would become a saga that follows the lives of a family through the end of the Civil War, the pain of the Reconstruction, and the extravagance of the Gilded Age – so far!

She now lives with her partner on a small farm in rural Kentucky, working her day job, writing at night, and feeding her family and friends from her extraordinary collection of traditional recipes from around the world.