Kathleen O'Neal Gear's professional life began at the Museum of Cultural History in Los Angeles where she was cataloguing three-hundred-year-old Guatemalan saint statues as part of her Ph.D. coursework. In 1980, she moved to Wyoming to work for the U.S. Department of the Interior as a historian and archaeologist, where she was twice awarded a "Special Achievement Award" for outstanding management of America's cultural heritage. She's authored or co-authored 50 novels and around 200 non-fiction articles. In 2015, the United States Congress honored her with a "Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition" for her work as an American archaeologist and writer, and the California State Legislature passed Joint Member Resolution #117, saying, "The contributions of Kathleen Gear to the fields of history, archaeology, and writing have been invaluable." In 2019, her book MAZE MASTER, won the International Book Award for Best Science Fiction novel.

She's married to W. Michael Gear, archaeologist and novelist, and they live near Cody, Wyoming.

In 2021, Kathleen and Michael jointly received the Owen Wister Award for lifetime contributions to Western literature. They will be inducted into the Western Writers of America Hall of Fame, housed outside the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, in the summer of 2021.

Website: www.gear-gear.com Twitter: @Gearbooks

For those who might be interested, here's a video taken at the World Heritage site, Cahokia: https://youtu.be/hhsovrQA9IY Hope you enjoy it.