Mary K. Kaiser is a retired NASA scientist and occasional author. She spent three decades conducting research on human-system integration (which is the august discipline of getting humans and complex aerospace systems to play nicely together). Her previous forays into writing were screenplays and teleplays, which garnered minor accolades and a few genuine paying gigs (the most substantial of these, a “Story By” credit on STARGATE: ATLANTIS was paid in Canadian currency, so Mary still doesn’t know how much she actually made). "The Muse of Kill Devil Hills" is her first novel.