L.M. Spilsbury | Science Fiction & Fantasy Author

L.M. Spilsbury is a Canadian science fiction and fantasy author who writes character-driven stories set close enough to the present to feel uncomfortably possible.

When she was five years old, she had a vivid flash of the future. In that instant, she knew two things: one day she would write a book and she would own a horse. They both took longer than expected. Apparently neither riding a horse nor writing a good story can be mastered in a hurry.

Born into an armed forces family in Prince Edward Island, she grew up moving across Canada and Europe, absorbing landscapes, histories, and the ways people adapt to both. That early exposure shaped the way she thinks about story: not just as plot, but as the intersection of place, pressure, and human choice.

Her lifelong love of speculative fiction began with Warlock of the Witch World by Andre Norton, given to her by a friend at age fifteen. It opened the door to science fiction writers like C.J. Cherryh, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Catherine Asaro. Their influence has cemented her belief that compelling characters are the foundation of every good story, and that the best plots grow organically from the choices those characters make.

By training, she is a scientist. She studied agricultural science, built a career in analytical laboratories, and later completed a graduate degree in veterinary pharmacology while working full-time—an experience that taught her as much about persistence as it did about science. That background now informs her fiction, where genetic engineering, pandemics, and emerging technologies are not abstract ideas, but lived realities with human consequences. These themes are central to her Modified Humans series, including the Dena Sinclair stories collected in Stepping Through.

Her stories explore what happens when capable people are pushed to their limits; when survival, loyalty, and identity are all in question. Whether set in a near-future shaped by biotech or in imagined worlds with their own internal logic, her work returns again and again to the same question: who are you when the pressure is real?

She lives near Toronto with her husband, several rescue dogs, and Larry, an ex-racehorse who remains convinced he is younger than he is. Larry occasionally appears on her blog, Horse Lover, where he is treated with the respect due to a former athlete and the rather besotted devotion that any self-respecting horse person lavishes on her equine partner.