Liz Schevtchuk Armstrong first heard the name “Hotspur” at age 12 in Shakespeare’s Henry IV play and it changed her life forever. Scouring libraries in her Midwestern town for information on Hotspur—Sir Harry Percy, a real person considered England’s finest knight circa 1400—she couldn’t find much. But she never forgot Hotspur or the suspicion that perhaps Shakespeare stretched reality a little—or a lot—in portraying him.

After studying journalism in college, Liz embarked on a long career in news at local to national levels, winning awards for investigative-type reporting on government as well as general coverage and feature-writing, and, in briefer editorial stints with non-profits, for public relations. As a reporter in Washington, D.C., she covered the White House, Congress, and Supreme Court, for U.S. and international daily news operations and worked for a time as a stringer for the Toronto Globe and Mail. During a news business downturn, she entered graduate school (continuing part-time as an overnight news editor) and studied medieval history, returning to her childhood interest in Hotspur’s conflict with Henry and exploring it in her quasi-thesis master’s project. That spawned To Remain Vigilant, Book I of the Epic of Hotspur series, which though cast as fiction tells a largely true story.

She now resides in upstate New York with her husband and 3 macaws.