Simone Snaith was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to musician parents who encouraged her to pursue her creative ideals, as long as she held down a day job. She spent most of her childhood reading, singing to herself, and writing the beginnings of novels that she never finished. Immersed in a world of films like Jim Henson's Labyrinth and books like Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time, she was a shy daydreamer, saddled with a bowl haircut and overly large glasses.

​

Her family moved to Southern California when she was 8 years old and by age 12, she was attending a small magnet school in Los Angeles alongside a lot of frighteningly big high schoolers. Behind a thick curtain of dirty-blonde hair, she dreamed of being a writer and singing in a rock band. She fell in love with ElfQuest by Wendy and Richard Pini, and wrote her first novel, heavily inspired by The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. It was called A Fairy's Adventure and was typed out on an electric typewriter. It's still in a folder somewhere in a closet.

​

She went on to study Creative Writing at U.C. Riverside under author Susan Straight and spent a fantastic year abroad at The University of London, King's College. After graduating, she did indeed start singing in bands, and also turned her love of the 1987 film The Lost Boys and Kate Bush's Hounds of Love album into From The Ashes and Through The Eyes, a Young Adult vampire duology that quickly landed her an agent but unfortunately, not a book deal.

​

Returning to her Fantasy roots, Snaith wrote several other novels before that agent vanished into smoke. After that, she began to self-publish. Drawing on inspiration as varied as The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, the 1988 film Willow, the 2009 animated film The Secret of Kells, The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin, the Ballad of Tam Lin, and her own strange dreams, she wrote The Indigo Stone (Fantasy), Magic & Machines (YA Fantasy) and In The Drawing (Urban Fantasy/New Adult). 

​

Eventually, an updated version of Magic & Machines, renamed Between The Water & The Woods, reached an editor at Holiday House Books (Penguin RandomHouse). Having started her current band (Turning Violet), as well as a new job in the books section of a record shop, Snaith watched with delight as Between The Water & The Woods hit the stores in March 2019 with Sara Kipin's beautiful illustrations. The novel received praise for its fairy tale-like qualities, realistic characters, and family-centered theme. 

​

Moving on from YA, Snaith next wrote an adult Fantasy novella entitled The Quavering Air, but decided to self-publish it due to the unpopularity of novellas in the publishing world. It was compared favorably several times to a Dungeons & Dragons adventure, which she considers quite a compliment, especially since she only played D&D once, in high school. 

​

Now working at the Los Angeles Public Library, and still singing in Turning Violet, Snaith is shopping a new adult Fantasy novel, THE FALL OF THE FINAL NIGHT. In some ways, it deals with darker themes than her books have addressed before, including grief and guilt. But it maintains what is always present in her writing: a sense of hope, the importance of family or found family, a quiet romance, and magic, plenty of magic.

 

​