## SHORT BIO (50 words)
Archaeologist Elena Vasquez weaves ancient Mayan mysteries into pulse-pounding thrillers. In *Shadows of the Forgotten City*, a cursed jade mask unleashes deadly rivalries across centuries. She splits her time between Tucson digs and restoring 1970s motorcycles in her dusty garage.

(48 words)

## MEDIUM BIO (150 words)
Elena Vasquez spent a decade excavating Mayan ruins before turning those bone-dry digs into heart-racing fiction. Her debut thriller *Shadows of the Forgotten City* follows an artifact hunter whose discovery of a jade death mask ignites a conspiracy linking 9th-century rituals to Silicon Valley greed.  
A field reporter for National Geographic in her early career, Elena draws on real expeditions—mud-caked notebooks and venomous snakes included—to ground her plots in tactile history. She's lectured at universities on Mesoamerican codices and once outran a collapsing cenote.  
Now based in Tucson, Arizona, Elena tinkers with vintage motorcycle engines and plots her next book, where Aztec codices hide tech billionaires' secrets.

(142 words)

## LONG BIO (300 words)
Elena Vasquez grew up in the Sonoran Desert, hauling rocks with her geologist father and sketching petroglyphs that whispered half-told stories. By 25, she'd traded classroom chalk for a trowel, joining expeditions in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. There, amid humidity-thick jungles and venomous fer-de-lance snakes, she uncovered pottery shards and jade talismans that fueled her obsession with history's hidden grudges.  
A stint as a stringer for National Geographic honed her eye for narrative amid chaos—she dodged rockslides to file stories on looted tombs. But the real pull was fiction: why bury truths when you could resurrect them? *Shadows of the Forgotten City* channels that fire. Its cursed jade death mask, inspired by a real 9th-century find from her Calakmul dig, drags a skeptical artifact appraiser into a web of rival collectors, ancient blood oaths, and boardroom betrayals.  
Elena's prose snaps like a breaking vine—taut, earthy, alive with the grit of fieldwork. Influences like Tony Hillerman's Navajo landscapes and Arturo Pérez-Reverte's historical swashbuckles seep through, but her voice is pure desert: spare, sun-baked, unflinching. She's shared her codex translations at the Southwest Museum and consulted on PBS documentaries about Mayan collapse.  
Today, from her Tucson adobe, Elena restores carburetors on Harley Sportsters, brews coffee strong as cenote water, and researches her follow-up: a thriller where an Aztec flower war manuscript exposes AI-driven corporate espionage. Her work insists the past isn't buried—it's just waiting to claw back.

(298 words)

## FIRST-PERSON "ABOUT ME" (100 words)
I write thrillers because Mayan ruins taught me history doesn't whisper—it bites. *Shadows of the Forgotten City* started with a jade mask I held in 2015; its carved screams demanded a story of artifact thieves and tech moguls chasing cursed power. I've dodged scorpions on digs, filed dispatches from collapsing caves, and now I trade trowels for keyboards in Tucson. When the words stall, I wrench on old motorcycles or hike slot canyons. Grab a copy, and let's unearth what the ancients left buried.

(98 words)

## SOCIAL HANDLE BIOS
- **Twitter/X (160 chars):** Archaeologist spinning Mayan curses into thrillers. *Shadows of the Forgotten City*: jade mask sparks killer conspiracy. Tucson mechanic by day. #HistoricalThriller DM for digs. elenavasquez.com @ElenaVasquezWrites (137 chars)

- **Instagram (150 chars):** Unearthing Mayan secrets 🗿 one thriller at a time.  
*Shadows of the Forgotten City*—cursed jade drags hunters into chaos.  
Desert hikes. Vintage bikes. Real digs.  
elena@elenavasquez.com 📍Tucson (128 chars)

- **LinkedIn (220 chars):** Archaeologist & author Elena Vasquez. *Shadows of the Forgotten City* blends Yucatán digs w/ modern conspiracy—jade death mask vs. artifact traffickers. Ex-National Geographic reporter; lecturer on Mesoamerican history. Open to speaking/podcasts. Tucson, AZ. elenavasquez.com (198 chars)

## AUTHOR PHOTO CAPTION
Elena Vasquez brushes dirt from a jade artifact replica during a 2022 Yucatán excavation.

## MEDIA CONTACT BLOCK
Elena Vasquez  
elena@elenavasquez.com  
(520) 555-0192  
elenavasquez.com  
Twitter/X: @ElenaVasquezWrites | Instagram: @ElenaVasquezWrites | LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/elenavasquez