Clare B. Dunkle: Hello. My name is Clare B. Dunkle. The B stands for Buccleuch that was my name before I got married. I kept it as part of my name because I'm very proud of being a Buccleuch. That's a family in Scotland in the border countries that owns land. In fact, there's still a Duke of Buccleuch there to this day.

When my first book was coming out, someone at the publishing house contacted me to ask whether or not my name was a pseudonym, a made-up name, because Clare means bright and Dunkle means dark in German, and they thought it was funny that my name was bright dark, which is an oxymoron, two opposite words stuck together. But in fact, it's just an accident of life. Dunkle is my husband's name and that's the name I took when I got married, so now I'm bright dark, Clare Dunkle.