In her real life, Marilyn is an administrative assistant for a construction company. She started her writing career in grade school, penning Dark Shadows, Man from U.N.C.L.E. and James Bond stories for her friends, none of which she ever finished.  It wasn’t until years afterward when she started brainstorming on how she could combine her love of writing and love of animals that she and Michael came up with the Snake Jones mystery series.

An animal lover since she could walk, she’s a volunteer at the Minnesota Zoo and fosters small pets for a local animal rescue group. She shares her home with an over-indulged senior Bichon, and an ornery cockatiel.

She enjoys reading all elements of the mystery genre and is the current president of the Twin Cities chapter of Sisters in Crime.   Marilyn is an associate member of the American Association of Zoo Keepers.

Michael works with computers in the Information Technology field, which must be amusing to his old college professors because he has a degree in English Literature.  He also managed to sneak out a degree in Electronics, much to the consternation of those who tried to peg him as only a liberal arts kind of guy.  He studies and teaches wing chun kung fu in Minneapolis and trains in Chen style tai chi.  His favorite mysteries come from the classic period of the 1930s and 1940s, although he enjoys a good yarn no matter what era it was written in, hence his love for Raphael Sabatini; John Dickson Carr; Charles Dickens; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne, to name a few of the old guard.  He also enjoys numerous contemporary mystery authors; but they're still living and can fend for themselves.  An avid animal lover, he is deeply interested in the welfare of wildlife and the conservation of nature.  He is married to Cathy and is enslaved by cats, one of which is a large Maine Coon that is often mistaken for a bobcat.  Why he would be sitting in the veterinarian's office with a bobcat in his lap should have been somebody's first clue they were mistaken. 

Michael is an associate member of the American Association of Zoo Keepers and an active member of Mystery Writers of America.

Marilyn and Michael have been friends for over 18 years.  Not always fast on the uptake, it only took them 15 years to figure out they'd have a better chance of getting published by joining forces rather than working independently.