About Zena Ryder

I was born in Britain and, after ten years in the US, I now live with my family in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.

 

With my freelance writer slippers on, I write mostly about construction for magazines, websites, and businesses. I also have a PhD in philosophy.  (What? You think construction and philosophy is a weird combination?)

 

In 2021, although I had lots of experience writing non-fiction, I hadn’t written fiction since I was a kid. But I decided not to be stymied by utter ignorance and a complete lack of skills and decided to write a complete first draft of a novel, NaNoWriMo-style.

 

I managed to 'win' at my unofficial NaNoWriMo, and then took a break from my draft for six weeks before re-reading it. But during revisions, I decided it was fatally flawed. (An historical fiction literary agent agreed.) So I started on a second novel.

 

Over a year later, I finished the first draft. And then I revised it (and revised it and revised it), and started querying literary agents with Committed, which is inspired by the life of the real person, Anna Elizabeth Dickinson. I'm now working on my next novel, which is based on another real person — Elizabeth Van Lew, a Richmond lady who was a Union spy during the American Civil War.

 

I’m a member of the Federation of BC Writers and the Historical Novel Society. You can connect with me on Instagram. Since 2018, I've run a local group for writers, Central Okanagan Writers. (Yes, we call ourselves COWs — because I like cows.) 

 

Other than writing, I like reading, running, and singing when nobody can hear me.