While she was a Fulbright Scholar to Russia, Elaine McCullough came to love the Russian people and their culture, and she hoped their country would join the Western democracies. Then Putin came to power, and her hopes, which so many shared, were soon dashed. Subsequently, she studied the nefarious influence that the Russian government and the Russian mob, Bratva, began spreading across the globe, but particularly in the United States. Now, her research focuses on how democracy is being dismantled by authoritarians in her own government.
In her other pursuits, she used her Ph.D. in Language, Rhetoric, and the Theory of Composition as a professor at Ferris State University in Michigan. She taught linguistics and a variety of literature and writing courses, including persuasive and technical writing; and she helped plan the University’s approach to online learning. She and a colleague owned a consulting company that delivered writing seminars throughout Michigan, and they wrote a column about writing for an area business journal. She lives deep in the north woods, caring for her rescued animals and writing novels.
McCullough used the Hero's Journey, as Joseph Campbell describes it in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, to conceptualize Sleight of Eye. A spirit helper, a frightening vision, and enemy tricksters inform this tale of a hero who survives a perilous journey to reach his fulfillment and then returns to his origins with helpers powerful enough to save his society.