A.C. Smart

A.C. Smart, aka Barbara Forman, made her first professional sale to the 2001 anthology Bending the Landscape, Volume 3. As she was teaching at an inner-city middle school at the time, she used a pseudonym: Alexi Smart. She continued as A.C. Smart with Havoc and Bellwether, both published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

She has since achieved both a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Forensic Anthropology, supplementing previous degrees in biology and psychology. She left behind the up-to-148-hour work weeks (not a typo) required to pay for said degrees, and has settled into a database research position which she enjoys and describes as “working puzzles.” She volunteers at a food bank, attends fossil-club field trips, SCUBA dives, trains cats, and has again taken up the pen. The taphonomy studies in her yard are placed so as not to disturb the neighbors, but the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources has found her queries disconcerting.

Her parents live in Oklahoma, where they homesteaded when the author was a teen. Her trips home are scheduled around both SoonerCon and the Murray County Antique Tractor and Implement Association Fair (September), for which she also volunteers.