Marianne G. Petrino lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband. Her college degrees had little or no bearing on this work; however, the school of hard knocks influenced her mightily. She has survived too many professions to count, and is currently enjoying a free-lance life style. Overall, she considers herself a strega, a renaissance woman, and after much examination, a writer. She maintains a page of overblown Thundercat fan fiction, Thunderan Weavings, and has a haphazard blog, The Star the Tiger Follows.