Mary A. Shafer, Author

Mary Shafer comes from a family of writers, and makes her living as a full time freelance writer in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Mary writes fiction and nonfiction books when she's not writing marketing copy and articles for trade and consumer magazines through her freelance business, The Word Forge.

A certified storm spotter in the National Weather Service SkyWarn program, Mary is fascinated by extreme weather, which she attributes to her personal experiences with severe storms. Just before her fifth birthday in 1966, Mary and her family got caught at Beach Haven, NJ (Long Beach Island) in the remnants of Hurricane Alma, which had once been a rare early-season Category 3 storm. Mary never forgot her terror, standing in the wind and driving rain, watching the waves crash up almost to her family’s car as they loaded to escape the storm.

In 1968, the family moved to a Milwaukee, Wisconsin suburb in the tornado-prone Midwest. Mary remembers the vague fear of going to bed on hot, humid summer nights while a tornado watch was in effect. On September 15, 1991, she woke from uneasy sleep to the screaming wind of a tornado as two twisters passed on either side of her northern Wisconsin property -- the most frightening night of her life.

Mary now manifests her obsession with severe weather by writing about it. She serves as volunteer Weather Coordinator for her hometown Emergency Management Agency, and is the founder of the Amateur Weather Enthusiasts of America (AWE-USA), an organization of non-meteorologist weather hobbyists.

Other topics of interest include history, animals, art, the environment, the relationship between healing and creativity, and non-religious spirituality. Mary is a part-time teacher of writing and drawing, and is a member of quite a few historic interest organizations.

Mary is also the founder and publisher of Word Forge Books, an independent small press.