Eliza Tucker Osborn

Who is Eliza Osborn?

I was born in the year of the Jonestown incident and the Lufthansa heist. That year Ted Bundy was captured, Charlie Chaplin's remains were stolen, and David Berkowitz was sentenced.

I share the birth year with K-Fed, Rachel Stevens, Jensen Ackles, Josie Maran, David Krumholtz, Erica Durance, Topher Grace, Kobe Bryant, Ruben Studdard, Clay Aiken, Nelly Furtado, Brad Delson, Ian Somerhalder, Jesse Metcalfe, Estella Warren, Katie Holmes, Justin Guarini and Ashton Kutcher. Y'know, just to give you some idea of how old and pop-cultural I am.

I was born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina. We spent a short spell on Hilton Head Island and then moved to the base of the Rockies in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We couldn't handle the snow and ice, so we moved back to South Carolina. I get sweet tea and grits and have even attended produce festivals like the Okra Strut and the Pelion Peanut Party. A peach isn't just a fruit, it's a way of life.

In second grade I began to read voraciously, and in sixth grade, under Mrs. Denton's direction, I learned to write daily. I was a freshman in high school when I saw the Disney musical Newsies for the first time. I blame director Kenny Ortega and his whole cast and crew for my fascination with turn of the century New York City.

By about tenth grade my life was packed with friends, performing arts, horseback riding, swimming and school. My casual reading dropped off but I continued to write. In school I learned to research and I focused my studies on old New York whenever I could. In my sophomore year of college I decided to really start reading again. I started with The Catcher in the Rye. I didn't read anything else for an entire year.

I went to college because I wanted to go into television writing, but I ended up developing a love for theology and non-fiction writing. I spent much spare time fangirling folk music artists like Caedmon's Call, Tori Amos, Waterdeep and the Indigo Girls and writing my first bits of historical fiction. Quite against my will I fell in love with a guy from the Great White North (Ohio), and soon we were married. And I was living in the land of the S-word. (Snow, Gutterbrains, snow). That first winter, this southern girl only ventured outside the apartment about six times. And Ohio winters tend to be very long.

Rob and I live in a 1929 Georgian colonial home in Youngstown, Ohio, the midwestern capital of violent crime, with our 3-year-old daughter. We are on a budget.

Over the years I've taught preschool and hunt seat riding, run after-school day care programs, directed junior high drama teams, retrained off-the-track Thoroughbreds, worked in politics, done office administrative work for a non-profit, and filled shot glasses with espresso under a banner that reads "We proudly brew Starbucks".

In all these years I've learned one thing: the only thing better is watching someone do something they love, and do it well, is to be the one doing what you love.

And so I write.