Debra Doyle was born in Florida and educated in Florida, Texas, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania -- the last at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her doctorate in English literature, concentrating on Old English poetry. While living and studying in Philadelphia, she met and married her collaborator, James D. Macdonald, who was then serving in the U. S. Navy. Together, they traveled to Virginia, California, and the Republic of Panamá, acquiring various children, cats, and computers along the way. James D. Macdonald was born in White Plains, New York in 1954, and raised in Bedford, New York, the son of a chemical engineer and an artist. He went to Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, and passed through the University of Rochester where he learned that a degree in Medieval Studies wouldn't fit him for anything. He went off to sea "to forget," though he's forgotten exactly what. As an enlisted Boatswain's Mate in the Navy, and later as an officer, he saw the world, a