Author Bio

Short bio

Tracey Lander-Garrett was born in the Village of Sleepy Hollow (yes, really) and loves all things spooky, paranormal, and romantic. Before focusing on writing full-time, she was an English professor for thirteen years in New York City. Tracey is an author, poet, and teacher who is always looking for new ways to rock pink hair. She now lives in Portland, OR with her husband and a clowder of cats. A SHADE IN THE MIRROR is her debut novel.

Long Bio, Or A Litany of Moves and Jobs

Tracey Lander-Garrett was born in the Village of Sleepy Hollow, in Westchester, New York. By the time she was four years old, she’d lived in Yonkers, NY, Mohegan Lake, NY and Elmsford, NY. She attended Dixon Primary and Grady Elementary schools. Her father James was a car salesman. Her mother Lynne worked off and on as an office assistant.

The family moved to Stamford, Connecticut when Tracey was seven years old. They lived in one house then moved to another. She attended Stark Elementary, Dolan Middle, and Rippowam High schools. After her parents’ divorce, at age fourteen, she moved to Melbourne, Florida to live with her mother and stepdad Ric in a trailer park for a year until they bought a home on the north side of town.

After graduation from from Eau Gallie High School with no particular honors, Tracey moved in with four friends, renting a house that soon (due to various nefarious elements) became known as the Rathole. After living in the Rathole for several months, she moved out and in her new situation, slept beneath her roommate’s four-poster bed.

Tracey returned to the northeast corridor shortly thereafter, living once again in Stamford, then moving to South Norwalk, CT and Ridgefield, CT. An exorbitant speeding ticket left her with no cash for rent, so she ended up sleeping on friends’ couches briefly before returning to Florida for a month, then returning to Stamford to live with a boyfriend. From there, sans boyfriend, she moved to Jersey City, NJ for a few months, then Brooklyn, NY for about a year and a half.

She left Brooklyn and moved in with a different boyfriend in three different apartments in Wilmington and Storrs, CT. She and the boyfriend married a few days before she started her first semester at the University of Connecticut. In her junior year, she studied abroad in London, and during that time abroad, her marriage broke up. She returned home early, cutting her studies short, then finished the classes over the winter break and went on to graduate magna cum laude, as a university scholar and a member of Golden Key.

After graduation, Tracey moved once again, into a house near the campus with friends, just for the summer. Then she spent a month sleeping on friend’s couches before moving to East Boston, MA. She was there about a year and half before moving back to Brooklyn, NY, where she stayed in one apartment for eleven years and another for three. During that time, she met and married her now-husband Sam, with whom she moved to Texas in 2016, then to Oregon in 2021.

Let us hope she is able to stick around there a while.

Her jobs have included fast food (Wendy’s); retail (department store, women’s clothing, record stores, bookstores, comic book stores); waitstaff (oyster bar & grill, semi-upscale restaurant, southwestern bar & grill, pizza/Italian); receptionist and cashier (Nissan dealership, escort service); house manager (Stamford Center for the Arts); personal assistant to Al Pacino (who gave her the chicken pox); artist’s, auction, and costume model; production assistant (PSA, Top of the Pops Bon Jovi video and others), editor (Xyan.com, Banta.com, Long River Review, Brooklyn Review); admin assistant (IT dept); and English professor (for 8 different colleges in the greater NYC area) and creative writing teacher (summer camp and library outreach programs).

She transitioned to her new job as a full-time writer in 2019.

Tracey loves walking in cemeteries, howling at full moons, playing RPGs, eating avocados, and wooing every cat she meets.