Take an industrial engineer who is a braniac with numbers, but yearns to write, and you wind up with Sandra Brannan, who thought she needed a degree in writing, like she had in engineering. Not quite. What Sandra learned? Just write.

Sandra Brannan has created a heart-pounding, award winning mystery series around the intelligent, ballsy Liv Bergen, a woman who embodies the spirit of South Dakota. Much like her fictional character, Sandra Brannan has spent her career in the mining business and lives in the Black Hills.