Debra Castaneda grew up in the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California as an only child. Finding adult conversation boring, she found companionship in books. She wrote her first murder mystery in the fifth grade, killing three characters in eight pages and turning it in as a homework assignment.

After college, she became a journalist working in television, radio and online. Her work has been featured on Marketplace, This American Life and National Public Radio (one story took her behind bars at San Quentin Prison to cover a baseball game). Most recently, she worked as a TV news director on the Central Coast of California.

Now, she devotes herself full-time to sitting in a tiny office and writing supernatural and science fiction stories with a dash of romance.

For much of her professional life, she has worked under her married name, Debra Monroe, but she writes fiction under her family name of Castaneda.

For inspiration, Debra draws from her experience as a journalist, as a third-generation Mexican-American and as someone who has lived in various parts of the country, including Dallas, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Portland and the San Francisco Bay area.

The Box in The Cuts is her first book. She’s currently working on a supernatural novella set in Chavez Ravine. 

Debra lives in Santa Cruz, California with her husband. She enjoys rediscovering the Mexican dishes of her childhood and texting her two daughters about her latest binge watch.