Tessa Barbosa always wanted to live in stories. As a child she cried, because she couldn’t go into the pages of her picture books to play with her animal friends. She loved books so much that after many late nights up reading, and eating distractedly at the table, her parents banned her from reading. It didn’t work. Tessa stuffed books under her mattress, hid them in her sweaters, and many poor paperbacks met their ruin in a hot bath.

But writing novels didn’t happen for a long time. She spent too much time in school: majored in computer science, minored in the fine and performing arts, and lived in Greece for a year to study archeology. Eventually she graduated and switched from a career in software development to technical writing, because words were always her first love. Now she writes software help by day, and fantasy novels by night. THE MOONLIGHT BLADE is her debut novel. What better way to live in stories than to write them?

Tessa is a regular contributor at Writer Unboxed. She attended Viable Paradise 16 and is a member of the Codex Writers’ Group. She resides on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.