Tracie Martin, who writes as T.L. Martin, and T.L. Gryfen, (1974 - ) was born in NJ to a wonderful Polish/Hungarian mother and a Puerto Rican father, leading her to have an interesting temper, and a voracious appetite for good food. She has also been a voracious reader her entire life.

Tracie learned to read at the age of 3 because her mom refused to read Green Eggs and Ham ONE MORE TIME. This led to her reading War and Peace, and Ulysses, at the age of 5. 

She contracted the writer's disease at a fairly young age (9) and started writing poems, stories, and plays; forcing everyone to read them and perform.

She was derailed from the dream of writing for a little while by the stereo-typical lying Navy recruiter who promised her a journalist billet, and then sent her in as a weather bunny instead. Basically she was trained to look out the window and tell people what the weather was doing. :-) 

After that, she decided a picture was worth 1000 words and started doing graphic design and web design. Tracie graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Digital Design/Visual Communication in 2006. After working at that for what seemed like a very long time, she rediscovered a love of story-telling and began writing a number of books and short stories. 

Her books and short stories span multiple genres and age groups, all of them incorporate some form of science fiction or fantasy. Her strong belief is that everything in life can be improved with a little bit of magic or wonder.

 She credits a certain author/publisher who she will only refer to as M.A for showing her that the dream was possible. He, along with a huge found-family of authors and readers,  taught her that reaching for the stars just might wind up in a glorious adventure.