Julie Hammonds fell in love with Hamlet during a high school trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and has nurtured her passion for Shakespeare ever since. She studied the plays in school, stage-managed The Winter's Tale and Much Ado About Nothing, and helped create the Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival. Her quest to complete the canon as an audience member has taken her from a community hall in Juneau, Alaska, to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. She has four plays to go. This is her first novel.