M. Allyson Szabo is an author, an interfaith minister, a mom, an aunt, and the chief cook and bottle washer at her home in lovely western New Hampshire. She does her best to defy labels, crush stereotypes, and further her post-graduate study of sarcasm as a superpower.
She started writing very young, popping out some (terribly written and grammatically questionable) stories as early as age ten. By her mid-teens, her writing ability and grammar had improved quite a bit. She was reading Shakespeare and Heinlein and Herbert, inhaling the Xanth books as they came out, and generally broadening her knowledge of the world. School, and later work, managed to dampen her spirits slightly, and she discovered that "adulting" was more difficult than anticipated.
She went back to writing, though, by her mid-20s. First it was articles, and those led to poetry, short stories, and eventually as the internet grew, to blog posts. Her first book, Longing For Wisdom, was published in 2008. Blood Stone came out in 2018, and was her second published novel, the first in the Taylor, Mage series. The second Taylor, Mage novel, Blood Water, was published in early 2020. Her cookbook, The Reenactor's Cookbook, came out just before #NaNoWriMo 2020, and has turned out to be wildly popular! In June 2023, Allyson added Cook Small, Live Large! to her repertoire. This "van life" cookbook is all about modern food served in small portions, perfect for the person living in their vehicle and traveling, or for tiny home and dorm room living. Allyson just published The Clay Table in October 2024, which brings us to the present.
Right now, Allyson is working on several projects, as usual. She's currently in the early stages of writing a Science Fiction novel with a co-author. She has an urban high fantasy novel on the back burner, and she's still pecking away at the book describing her grandmother's life (a fictional account that does its best to capture the spunk and temerity of the grandmother who nurtured her) and going through the first edit of the last of the Taylor, Mage novels.