Rita Lumpkin was born in the Texas Panhandle and published her first book, The Unfiltered Soul, in 2013. Since the advent of her character Spencer Hardesty, she's managed to take him on a variety of adventures from heaven to the gates of hell and back home to Chicago. Ms. Lumpkin hadn't intended to write a series, but the characters from her first book have taken over and as of this writing, she still has more stories to tell.