At age 20, Ellen Piano made her first sale, a series of 10 feature stories about her summer adventure in Europe, to a metropolitan newspaper. This ignited her passion for publishing. She went on to sell more features, write teaching guides plus work full-time in marketing for two community daily newspapers, Random House and The New York Times. Ellen has taught high school journalism and writing courses at community colleges. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, a retired journalist, plays a little jazz piano, and feeds the neighborhood cat affectionately named Killer.