SOME PEOPLE ARE drawn irresistibly to a particular profession. Sometimes by happenstance, sometimes by design; sometimes by a mixture of the two.

Ellen Byerrum has always been drawn to the profession of writing, as a reporter, a playwright, a media professional, and a mystery writer. She earned her journalism degree at a major public university, which has since scuttled its once-prestigious School of Journalism and folded the mighty journalism program into a mere  “Department of Communications.” (Journalists everywhere were saddened.) Luckily, she'd built a successful career as a working journalist before her degree in this rapidly changing profession could be used against her.

Ellen has worked at a number of reporting jobs, beginning her career at small newspapers in small towns in the West -- including one particular town she has fictionalized as “Sagebrush, Colorado.”  Later she found her way into the Big Leagues of journalism: Washington, D.C., a city rich in history, culture, political drama, and crimes of fashion. Our Nation’s Capital is a fertile source of inspiration for her Crime of Fashion Mystery series.

In researching her mystery novels, she's earned her private investigator’s registration in Virginia, interviewed innumerable fascinating sources, and toured such varied scenes as a velvet factory in its last days, abandoned cowboy campsites in backwoods Colorado, and the immense costume collections behind the scenes at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. She also researches and collects vintage clothing, like Lacey Smithsonian, the heroine of her Crime of Fashion Mysteries.

However, Ellen notes ruefully, the fictional Lacey seems to have more clothes and a larger closet. (And of course Lacey has her Aunt Mimi's magical bottomless trunk, filled with fabulous vintage clothes, fabrics, patterns and fashion memorabilia.)