Cathi-Lyn Dyck grew up on an organic family farm in Manitoba, Canada. She wrote her first story at the age of six. It consisted of an impressive total of three pages, with nearly a whole sentence on each. She also illustrated her story.

After that, she went on to doodle cartoon mice in every class of high school, snapping out of it only for English. Although she tried her hand at speculative fiction, she came to the remarkably insightful conclusion that she needed to experience more of life before trying to write about it. She decided to try writing again someday, and soon forgot all about it.

Cathi-Lyn moved into the not-so-giant metropolis of Brandon and attended a year at Brandon University's School of Music, where she majored in Music Composition. Distracted by youthful romance, she married her Mennonite paramour and left formal education to begin raising their family of four.

Wheedled into homeschooling by a husband of conviction, she then took on the task of educating their four wild (but not uncultivated) children. She soon realized her unschooling childhood had uniquely equipped her to teach both her children and herself. She began to call it "life-led learning," rather than "child-led learning," as she spun daily situations into spontaneous lessons.

In 2001, a serendipitous encounter with another Canadian writer via the internet reminded Cat that life is not all diapers and housecleaning. She realized that she had been secretly crafting stories to while away the late-night hours during her husband's night shifts. She decided then to begin learning the craft of writing.

It was all downhill from there. In 2006, Cat joined The Word Guild and attended her first writing conference in Winnipeg. In 2007, she joined the American Christian Fiction Writers. Suffering terribly under her addiction (because of the time taken up by real life), Cat now struggles not to enjoy writing too much.