Bio: Cathy McCarthy was born May 24, 1952 in Ottawa Ontario, Canada. She spent much of her formative childhood on a farm in the Gatineau Hills, just north of Ottawa with her grandmother and two elderly aunts. Here she gained a spirituality and an appreciation for all that surrounded her that translates into all her writing. She currently resides just outside Washington DC with her husband Jim and daughter Emma. From the time she was first able to put ideas to paper, Cathy has pursued her muse in writing works of fiction and non-fiction alongside the more practical aspects of keeping body and soul.

After thirteen years of a professional career in systems librarianship, and two more as an ISP provider, she heeded her primary calling and retired to pursue a writing career. Except for necessary diversions into the working world, Cathy considers herself first and foremost a storyteller and a keeper of legends. Cathy holds a four-year Bachelor of Arts in History from Ottawa University and a Masters in Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has also pursued studies in Film Art and Propaganda, Creative Writing, Native American History and Shamanism, Celtic Shamanism and Public Administration during her lifetime.

While The Hollow represents her first commercial publication of fiction, Cathy is published in peer-reviewed journals associated with her profession and has been privately published throughout the Canadian Federal Government. Along with The Hollow, Cathy has completed one other unpublished work of fiction, Dissent in Real Time, a story of computer espionage and government control. She is also two-thirds finished with her third manuscript, The Voyage, a story of human will and love in the face of overwhelming physical disability.