Alessa is in her late 50’s and lives on the coast in a small apartment with her partner, Traci and their two cats. in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was raised in Rochester, New York and came out west in 1969, settling in California in 1972. She enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in her teens (don’t ask), and was a B-52 crew chief and a C-141 flight engineer over 20 years on active duty and the reserves. She also had a career in selling real estate where she managed a realty office for nearly 20 years. She finally got a BA degree from San Francisco State University in 2006 in English and Creative Writing (going back to school was not easy). Today, Alessa is employed at a small San Francisco nonprofit where she teaches disaster preparedness. And of course, she writes.