The Witch and Her Daughter

C. Dale Brittain is both a fantasy author and a professor of medieval history, having been writing stories since she was five years old. Reading J.R.R. Tolkien at the age of fourteen made her determine to write fantasy, and a high-school trip to Europe with her family, which included a lot of climbing around castles, propelled her into a career as a medievalist. She wrote dozens of novels (of varied length and quality) in her youth, but "A Bad Spell in Yurt" was the first to be published.