My book gave you nightmares? Thank you, that's wonderful.' Sadistic killers? Here, have another helping. I get to slingshot readers into situations they would hate to face in real life. It's about people facing a severe danger, or confronting an evil that has invaded their world. Gardiner says that she writes crime fiction because it 'gets to the heart of the human condition. 'It's a job I'm immensely lucky to have.' Since then, Gardiner has written full-time and published eleven additional titles. Her first novel, China Lake, was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2002. It was during her freedom in those early years in the UK that she wrote her first novel, completing a task she'd set for herself a decade earlier. After living in California most of my life, in the early 1990s, I moved with my family to the United Kingdom', said Gardiner. In earlier incarnations, I practiced law in Los Angeles and taught writing at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She lived in Surrey, near London, until 2013, when she moved to Austin. She went on to graduate from Stanford Law School and to practice law in Los Angeles, before returning to Santa Barbara to teach legal research and writing at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Meg attended Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, a community just north of Santa Barbara, graduating in June 1975.įollowing graduation, she attended Stanford University, where she attained her Bachelor's degree in Economics and lettered in track. Gardiner is the daughter of English professor Frank C. And yes, I did go in costume to the Star Trek exhibition in Hyde Park.

Of course, there's more - and because the Internet can fact-check you, faster than you can type 'Sarah Palin', I'm going to come clean: It's true that I used to be a mime. I taught writing at the University of California. Gardiner has said quite simply: 'I write thrillers,' before recently elaborating: 'I used to practice law. She currently lives with her husband, Paul Shreve, in Austin, Texas. Gardiner was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Santa Barbara, California.

Ransom River by Meg Gardiner