* Lakin's contemporary novel, Someone to Blame won the Zondervan First Novel contest at Mount Hermon in April 2009. The novel will be published in October 2010.

* Lakin's three fantasy novels (The first in The Gates of Heaven series) have been acquired by AMG/Living Ink Publishers. The first book, The Wolf of Tebron, will be released August 2010. Visit the new Web site for the series: www.gatesofheavenseries.com.

* Innocent Little Crimes made the top semifinals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest last May (top 100 of 5,000). Lakin received a full read by Publisher's Weekly, which gave the book a stunning review: "Revenge is indeed a dish best served cold in this fast-paced, thrilling story . . . a page-turning thrill-ride that will have readers holding their breaths the whole way through."

* Lakin is working on her tenth novel: the fourth in her fantasy series entitled The Unraveling of Wentwater, and she has just completed a literary mystery entitled Conundrum, centered loosely around the mystery of her father's death to leukemia at age thirty-three.

Lakin grew up in the Big Orange, when there were still orange groves in the Los Angeles basin. Her first novel, A Rip in the Redwood Curtain, was picked up by the first agent who read it, Ben Kamsler -- Elmor Leonard's agent at the time.

Too literary and obtuse, the book never sold and remains under Lakin's mattress. Kamsler, 92, decided it was time to retire, which sent Lakin off to obtain new representation.

While running a bed and breakfast inn, raising two daughters, and breeding dozens of pygmy goats, Lakin pumped out another two novels. Fifteen years later, top New York editors are sitting up and taking notice. Perhaps Lakin was ahead of her time.

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