Photo of L.Reeve by Jared Hagan
Photo by Jared Hagan

About Us

Here at Cajun Coyote Media (CCM), we’re all about science fiction and fantasy (SF/F). My husband and I read a lot of SF/Fantasy. Thanks to my parents, I was practically raised on it. Now I write it under the name Laura E. Reeve. I have been published by a traditional publisher (currently some of my novels are listed under Penguin Random House's imprint Ace, although before the big merger they were under Penguin's imprint Roc). I've also written a niche fantasy series that wouldn't appeal to a conventional NY publisher—which was why I created CCM using a small-business model that can publish my books without warehousing.

First, what's up with our name? Who's the Cajun Coyote? That would be my husband, who was born in southern Louisianna to Cajun parents, but was hauled around the U.S. as an Air Force brat. Whenever his father went overseas, his mother took him and his siblings back down to Louisianna so she could live near relatives. If you ever happen to be near the Vermillion Village in Lafayette, LA, take a walk through what they call the "Broussard House" (4 sets of blue doors, long porch). In the late 1950's, it was located in New Iberia and owned by my husband's grandmother. He remembers sleeping in the attic there when he was young. The family later sold the land with house, which was eventually donated and moved to Vermillionville and de-modernized to be an exhibit. My husband went to the U.S. Air Force (USAF) Academy and spent twenty years in the USAF as a pilot/instructor, test pilot, engineer, and USAF Academy instructor. While a pilot, he was training to fly reconnaissance aircraft over Vietnam when President Nixon, luckily, stopped the war. The USAF then kindly sent him to the Air Force Institute of Technology and later to Oxford. He is my silent partner here at CCM, using his time to copyedit and be my scientific advisor (quite helpful for SF, but rather useless for Fantasy).

My family background is more varied. (See my writer's bio and media kit, here, for formal biography). I have a grandfather who grew up on a Connecticut farm with a family who practically goes back to Plymouth Landing (English, Welsh), finally settled in New York City, and a grandfather who immigrated to the U.S. from Finland when he was nine years old and finally settled in New Hampshire. However, neither fared well through the Depression so both my father and my mother got to college on scholarships. My father went to Queens College, NY, based upon his sterling grades and New York City education benefits. In New Hampshire, my mother got a scholarship from the Daughters of the American Revolution to go to a local college and study microbiology. There were dark mutterings in my mother's town about the DAR giving a daughter of immigrants a scholarship, but it was just sour grapes. My parents met in Baltimore and married. By the time my little sister was born, our small family was entrenched just outside Boulder, CO. Given that my parents didn't need financial help from their parents to get through college, I felt guilty and applied for an Air Force R.O.T.C. college scholarship at Colorado State University. Fast forward: after a B.S. Chemistry, M.S. Systems Analysis, nine years in the USAF, and sixteen years in commercial software development, I decided to pursue my dream of writing SF and Fantasy.

We currently live in Monument, CO, with a Shiba Inu who runs the household. My hobbies include xeriscape gardening as well as playing, running, and writing RPGs. My husband still consults for DoD contractors and his hobbies include playing keyboard for several bands (rock and roll, Dixieland, whatever's needed) and playing a historic theatre organ during summer concerts.

Laura E. Reeve