Robin Mayhall is a public relations professional with nearly 30 years of experience in business and feature writing. She lives in Louisiana, writing speculative fiction and poetry in her "spare time," with occasional help from her cat, Banichi. (He's named after a character from novels by one of Robin's favorite authors, C.J. Cherryh.)
Mayhall is an accomplished copyeditor who has worked on books ranging from children's and young adult self-help texts to the award-winning YA novel "Echohawk," published by Clarion Books. Her own first young adult book (and first graphic novel) was "The Quest for Dragon Mountain," released by Graphic Universe in 2011. The book is part of an acclaimed series for younger readers, called "Twisted Journeys," similar to the "choose your own adventure" books that were a craze when Mayhall was a preteen.
Her second book, the YA graphic novel "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not," was published by Graphic Universe in 2013. The book is part of a series of eight YA fantasy graphic novels based loosely on classic "monster tales," such as the story of Frankenstein's monster, vampire lore, zombie stories, and in the case of Mayhall's story, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Mayhall set this horrific tale of an uncontrollable evil twin in a central Texas high school.
Born and raised in Louisiana, Mayhall attended college at The University of Texas at Austin, and she lived in Austin for another 10 years after graduation. She fell in love with the climate, geography, history and culture of central Texas, and she became fascinated by the obsession of many Texans with high-school football. She had always wanted to write a story set in the Texas Hill Country, even after she moved back to her hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2001. She loved being able to combine that idea with the Jekyll-and-Hyde story in a YA graphic novel as "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not."
Mayhall has written poetry off and on since her early teens, and she discovered science and science fiction poetry around the early 2000s. A particular interest is astronomy poetry--she has written extensively about Jupiter's moon, Titan, among other heavenly bodies--but she also writes fantasy and horror poems. Her work has appeared in print and online publications such as Scifaikuest, Astropoetica, Strange Horizons, Tales from the Moonlit Path, ChiZine, Ultraverse, Abyss & Apex and The Shantytown Anomaly. Her first published poem, "Mother of Atlantis," was nominated in 2005 for the Rhysling Award given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (www.sfpoetry.com). Since then she has seen a second poem nominated for a Rhysling.
Mayhall continues to write poetry and is currently exploring the discipline and formal structure of very short form poetry, such as haiku. She is also working on four novels and admits to having just a teensy bit of trouble finishing a long project!
Mayhall was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 21 and has had both knees and both hips replaced. Along with her other activities, she is an advocate for the disabled and especially for people with arthritis. She devotes as much time as she can to promoting awareness of the burden of arthritis on both patients and on the country, as arthritis is the No. 1 cause of disability in the United States, forces people into early retirement, shortens their working lives and causes absenteeism and economic hardship. Mayhall also works to promote arthritis research, whether by government agencies or independent scientists funded as generously as possible.
Today, Mayhall works full-time in public relations--unusual for an RA patient--and dotes on two nephews and one incredibly spoiled cat. When she wins the lottery, she will build an environmentally friendly and fully accessible writing studio/cat shelter/retirement home in the Texas Hill Country and write full-time, with several more felines to supervise. She never stops dreaming.
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