The Regency novelist turned SF author is 65 today.

Today is June 1, 2021, and it is the 65th birthday of science fiction, fantasy, romance, and mystery author Rosemary Edghill.

Rosemary Edghill was born June 1, 1956 in the United States. She started her literary career writing and illustrating fanfic (fan fiction), principally Star Wars, under the name Eluki bes Shahar. Some of her plots and characters would eventually be recycled into her Hellflower trilogy. Her first professionally published books were Regency romances:

• Turkish Delight (1987)
• Two of a Kind (1988)
• The Ill-Bred Bride (1990)
• Fleeting Fancy (1993)

Like Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote Treasure Island because he looked at what his stepson was reading and said I can do better than that, Rosemary Edghill was inspired by a Regency romance that ignored both history and geography.

As she herself said “I was reading a book – which happened, as these things do, to be a Regency novel – and not thinking at all about becoming a writer. At the time I was doing production and design at a New York graphic arts studio, a location which later found its way as background into some of my books, so I figured all my artistic impulses were pretty well taken care of, as well as a steady paycheck. But as I was reading along I encountered a passage in which the heroine took a train from London to Malta – the island of Malta, you understand, an island surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea without a single bridge leading to it – in 1805, several decades before the invention of the passenger train, ignoring all the rules of both history and geography ?- and the Writing Fairy landed on my shoulder and whispered in my ear: you can do better than that.“

She is best known for her collaborations with other authors, fantasy icon Mercedes Lackey, Marvel Comics’ Tom De Falco, controversial SF author Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930-1999), and the late, great Andre Norton (1912-2005). While she has, of course, written short fiction, she is primarily a novelist.

The Hellflower books are SF, and had their roots in Star Wars fanfic.

1. Hellflower (1991)
2. Darktraders (1992)
3. Archangel Blues (1993)
4. The trilogy was collected in a hardcover omnibus, Butterfly and Hellflower (1993)

The Bast mysteries are about a modern day Wiccan who stumbles into mysteries like an American Jane Marple. At last report, Edghill was working on a new Bast story. The first three books were collected in Bell, Book, and Murder (1997)

1. Speak Daggers to Her (1994)
2. Book of Moons (1995)
3. The Bowl of Night (1996)

The Three Treasures trilogy is urban fantasy — not unlike the Bedlam’s Bard/SERRAted Edge novels she would later write with Mercedes Lackey.

1. The Empty Crown (SFBC Omnibus Edition of the three “Twelve Treasures” novels)(1997)
2. The Sword of Maiden’s Tears (1994)
3. The Cup of Morning Shadows (1995)
4. The Cloak of Night and Daggers (1997)

Edghill wrote the four -light books with Marion Zimmer Bradley.

• Ghostlight (1995)
• Witchlight (1996)
• Gravelight (1997)
• Heartlight (1998)

Edghill wrote Time’s Arrow: the Future, an Uncanny X-Men and Spider-Man novel, with Tom De Falco in 1998. She wrote the X-Men novel Smoke and Mirrors (1997)as a solo project.

Because of her experience writing Regency romances, Edghgill was invited to collaborate with SFWA Grandmaster Andre Norton on two alternate history novels in the Carolus Rex series: The Shadow of Albion (1999) and Leopard in Exile (2001).

With Mercedes Lackey, Edghill has co-written 8 fantasy novels in Lackey’s SERRAted Edge series, 4 YA fantasy adventures, and 1 western horror novel: Dead Reckoning (2012).

• Beyond World’s End (2001)
• Spirits White as Lightning (2001)
• Mad Maudlin (2003)
• Bedlam’s Edge (2005)
• The World’s More Full of Weeping (2005)
• A Host of Furious Fancies (2012)
• Music to My Sorrow (Bedlam’s Bard) (2005)
• The Waters and the Wild (2019)

The Shadow Grail series, with Mercedes Lackey

1. Legacies (2010)
2. Conspiracies (2011)
3. Sacrifices (2013)
4. Victories (2014)

She has also collaborated with Denise McCune and Rebecca Fox on short fiction.

Eosemary Edghill edits as well as writes. For many years, she trained and showed King Charles spaniels. We look forward to many more books and stories in the future and wish her a happy birthday!