Master of the highlands

Sue-Ellen Welfonder is an American writer of historical romance novels and as Allie Mackay, she writes paranormal romance novels. She is a member of the Romance Writers of America and her own clan society, the MacFie Clan Society of North America. An avid reader since earliest childhood, native Floridian Sue-Ellen MacDuffie spent nearly twenty years working for the airlines before she decided to try her hand at writing historical romance novels.With her great love of medieval history, her passion for the British Isles, and her own Scottish ancestry, it isn't surprising that she chose medieval Scotland as the perfect backdrop for her romance novels. Through her years as a flight attendant, Sue-Ellen has seen the world, but no place ever captured her heart as soundly as the Highlands and WesternIsles of Scotland. While she makes annual research trips to Great Britain, she will tell you a good-sized portion of her heart always remains behind.Between visits, she often finds herself plagued by what she calls being 'homesick for the Highlands.' The best cure for this ailment, one she suspects is shared by many, is an airline ticket across the Big Pond. Butsince such a remedy is not always practical, she has found the best way for her to return to the special place she loves best, is to sit at her computer, place her hands on the keyboard, and slip into what her dearfriend, Regency author Pat Cody, calls the writer's trance ... a wonderful state of being that allows a writer's everyday surrounds to fade away andenables the writer to slip into the world of their story. Sue-Ellen's travels also led her to the most important day in her life, the day she met her German-born husband, Manfred Welfonder, during a trip to theBavarian capital, Munich. The couple lived there for fifteen years, and while Sue-Ellen enjoyed 'the Munich years,' she claims the best thing about living there was being just a two hour flight away from London. She took full advantage of this and spent many long weekends and holidays exploring the places that would someday become the inspiration and settings of her novels. Sue-Ellen lives with her husband and her muse (their Jack Russell Terrier, Em) in Florida. When not writing or walking her dog, she can usually be found scouring the history section of used bookstores, trying to think of a clever new way to ask her husband to please build her some new bookshelves, or curled in a corner of the sofa late at night, happily lost in the pagesof a research book on medieval Scotland.