My name is Chele Cooke. Actually, my legal name is Michele Cooke, but after a lot of miss-pronunciations, misspellings, and an extraordinary amount of spelling my own name to everyone, I decided that I wanted to go with Chele, (pronounced Shell) a nickname I've been using since I was a teenager. (Don't call me Shelly. We had a dog once, it was a confusing time.) If I was going to have a name spelled wrong all the time, it might as well be original.

You may also notice that I tend to go off on tangents, side notes, and anything else that stops me from talking about what I'm here to talk about. I also love gifs, musical references, and absolutely anything about San Francisco.

I can imagine that this introduction is not exactly what you may be used to. I have read a lot of author introductions about how they grew up in a small town, fell in love with writing as a teenager while writing Harry Potter fan fiction, and developed into original fiction, releasing their first book in 2013. We've all read those short biographies, but I don't know how well I feel I know the author from those. I don't get a sense of them as a person, only them as a writer. (All the example above is true, by the way. Insert the Javert gif again.)

No more of that. If you want to know more about me as a person, or my love of gifs, musicals, that I am a dog person, or that my patronus is a Hedgehog... you can always follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram or you can come stalk me in London while I cross stitch, walk around thinking about random plots, occasionally put on fantastically bright red lipstick, and cry to almost every episode of Greys Anatomy I watch.

I actually started out writing Fantasy and Women's fiction. Lots of romantic comedy type fiction. It wasn't until I had this odd idea about an alien invasion that I moved into Science Fiction, and oddly, I never looked back. I found it fitted me better.

And then Vampires came along and completely screwed everything! (As vampires are often want to do.)

So, I started writing some urban fantasy as well. I still have a few ideas that are straight fantasy, but for the most part, I'm happy with these odd mash-ups I've got going on. People don't expect them, and I'm finding a unique readership of people who didn't realise they enjoy genre-bending.

And people who didn't know they needed vampires discussing red bull, the munchies, and what they think of traditional paranormal fiction.

Let's face it, we all need that in our lives.

I am a big fan of TV shows, movies, theatre... anything that tells an interesting story. My tastes on these are varied, and I enjoy a little bit of everything from romantic comedies to psychological thrillers to Lord of the Rings.

The only thing I don't really enjoy is full horror. If you've read Teeth, this might surprise you, as there are a couple of gory moments in that, but honestly... horror makes me sick  - Actually physically ill! I can't watch it. I tried to watch Saw, and I threw up. I think it has something to do with being inside my head too much, trying to think about how I'd react to scenarios... and yeah, apparently how I'd deal with being in a horror movie, is I'd vomit. It's actually a bit of a pity, because I think there are some phenomenal plots out there for Horror. I really like the idea of the plot of The Purge, but I haven't brought myself to watch it yet.

I'm a huge Disney fan! I sob like a little child at some of them, I know all the words to the songs (and yes, I sing along,) and I also have a pair of young niblings to blame this all on. (Wooo for family!)

Massive fan of musicals. Again, there is a lot of obsessive listening to sound tracks. (Hamilton, I'm looking at you.) If I started talking, we could be here for a while. But yeah, you ever want to kill a few hours, ask me about musicals.

Lastly, because this section could go on for a while, I am a card-carrying button-masher. I love gaming, but I am awful at it. I've told my friends that I am the least sneaky assassin you will EVER find on Assassin's Creed. I'll sword fight entire units of soldiers just to get that treasure box. I'll hide in a bush for five cycles of a soldier wandering around, then I'll jump out of the bush like AH-HA... because I didn't change my weapon from sword to hidden blade so I can quietly assassinate.

But mostly, whenever we're talking about books, movies, theatre, even games, it's all about story for me. If whatever I'm watching/playing/reading doesn't have a good story, I'm out. It's why I hate reality TV, because it's all plotless drama. I need a good background story to enjoy a game (I don't like racing or sports games.) I need a plot, I need a story, I need... something wonderful.

I suppose it's why I started writing...

And I bet you thought we wouldn't get back to the writing from here, did you?