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Cynthia McKenzie Hilliard was born and raised in the small town of Barnesville, Ohio, the fourth of five children. Her father was the foreman of a line crew for the Ohio Power Company, and her mother taught high school math. She was Valedictorian of her class in 1966.

She is a 1970 Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude graduate of Miami University (Oxford, Ohio), and earned an MBA from Capital University (Bexley, Ohio) in 1994. She married her high school sweetheart, David, the fall before their senior year of college, and they will celebrate their 53rd anniversary this year. They have one son, who lives nearby with his wife and two small boys.

Hilliard has lived in a total of three apartments, one duplex, and ten houses in six different states since she left college, so “making a move” is a familiar theme. Hilliard spent her working years in sales and management in the Information Technology industry, working for IBM, various banks, and manufacturing companies. She also sold advertising for a small weekly newspaper, and devoted many hours to community and church activities.

After retiring from the corporate world, Hilliard babysat, volunteered, and managed a house remodeling project. Then the character of Rook McFadden took up residence in her head one summer day and wouldn’t leave. Hilliard has written hundreds, perhaps thousands, of reports, summaries, newsletters, business letters, emails, performance reviews, and minutes for various nonprofits and church committees through the years, but Rook demanded her attention in a different way. She started writing scenes, studying the craft of writing, and working on a plot.

After working on her novel for five years, Hilliard got serious about Rook in 2018: hiring an editor, a book designer, and committing to writing every day. Ten revisions later, she formed Spindlewood Press L.L.C. and launched Rook into the world on September 29, 2020.