About the Author

Alex Harlequin was born in England in 1990 and has wanted to write books since the age of six. Despite a still-ongoing struggle with ME/CFS, she came up with the final idea for Hidden Knight last year and has been thinking hard about it ever since.

She was diagnosed with ME four years ago and lost a lot of self-confidence. When she found it harder to get into new books, she turned to fanfiction and after a while began writing some herself. She only posted any in the first place because a friend, Jocasta, told her it was too good not to. Since then she has starting posting over 20 chaptered fanfictions on various websites under the penname Alexannah, including her famous "Emeralds and Green Light" (Harry Potter), and the feedback she recieved encouraged her to start looking at original work as well.

Hidden Knight is not the only project she wants to get into print, but the nearest to that goal. Other projects include a couple of short stories, a "rather dark" period romance aimed at older teenagers, two books for younger children - a "guide for aliens living on earth, written by aliens who have no idea what they're talking about" and a ghost story that's been living in her mind since primary school, and a larger, deeper fantasy series called Magaico which was inspired mainly by the successful Harry Potter series.

The idea for the character of Josie, Kyla's neice, came from Alex's own cousin, Amber. Ma was created in a Creative Writing class and was the first character to properly take shape. Nora and Kyla both came from characters Alex used to scribble about in an attempt to keep her writing skills. Willow was based on a crush from a few years ago ("but don't ask who it was!").

At the moment Alex is studying for Media AS exam and English Lit GCSE, with a hope to take Art, English, Psychology and Latin later. Her aim is to have her first novel in print by the time she's 21 (but hopefully long before!). If you ask her what her greatest ambition is she would say "To be the next J.K Rowling".

Alex's idols for the last few years have been J.K Rowling, whose fantastic work made her see clearly what she wanted to be, and her mother Lin, who has been a terrific support and helped her through the hard years of ME.