Lyra Swann
“The ocean doesn’t care about our plans, our fears, or our carefully constructed boundaries—it simply is, vast and wild and transformative. That’s how I write love stories. I believe the best romances happen when characters stop trying to control the tide and learn to trust the current, even when it carries them toward something that will change everything they thought they knew about themselves. Every selkie tale, every sea-born legend I craft is really about that moment when you realize home isn’t a place—it’s the person brave enough to dive beneath the surface with you.”
Lyra Swann teaches middle school English by day on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where she’s learned that the best stories are the ones that make eighth-graders forget to check their phones. Surrounded by shipwreck legends, wild horses, and waters that have claimed more vessels than anyone cares to count, Lyra discovered that her coastal home shares more than just salt air with the remote islands of Celtic legend—both places understand that the sea keeps its own secrets.
Her debut selkie-shifter romance, Tides of the Heart, launches the Bound by the Sea series on The Sculpted Word, weaving together her fascination with ancient folklore and her deep understanding of what it means to feel caught between two worlds. Living where the Graveyard of the Atlantic meets the Labrador Current, Lyra has always been drawn to stories of transformation, of beings who belong neither fully to land nor sea, and of the dangerous pull of love that defies the natural order.
Lyra is currently crafting the first novel in her ambitious ten-book Enchanted Ephemera series, where the magic of second chances takes on literal dimensions. Drawing inspiration from the sea glass and forgotten treasures that wash up on Outer Banks shores after every storm, Lyra explores what happens when the mysterious Cabinet of Ephemera appears to women whose hearts have been shattered by life’s betrayals, offering them impossible objects that pulse with transformative magic—pressed flowers that bloom under moonlight, bottles filled with liquid starshine, letters that rewrite destiny with every word. Having spent years watching her students discover their voices through storytelling, Lyra understands that healing happens when we’re brave enough to believe our stories matter, and her new series celebrates the truth that our deepest wounds often become our greatest strengths. “Every piece of sea glass started as something broken,” Lyra explains. “The Enchanted Ephemera series is my love letter to every woman who’s ever felt shattered by life, because I believe our fractures aren’t flaws—they’re where the light gets in, and where the magic begins.”
English