ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE TRENT SAGA: Born on some indeterminable date during the reign of the last emperor in the bitter wastelands of the Great White North, Neil L. R. Tate has finally found the professional niche that has led him on quest to many exotic locales-writing fiction. The art of fiction requires the author to wear many mantles and delve a great store of knowledge as well as be a jack-of-all-trades baptized in the waters of the world and dried by the cosmic winds of space. Every character that storms, slithers, and slinks into a novel must offer unique qualities of skullduggery, scumbaggery, flaws, virtues, and talents that set her apart from the other denizens within the universe created in the fertile spaces of the author's mind. To achieve the believability and uniqueness that sets forth a great novel, the author must plumb deep the wells of experience, adventure, and imagination. To this end, Tate remains an inveterate world traveler, scuba diver, and private aviator. He has stood on the craters of smoking volcanoes; survived tsunamis, typhoons, and tornadoes; been jolted by earthquakes and jilted by beautiful women; shot at; slashed at, and nearly rolled into smoking aircraft wreckage-through all this mayhem, Tate has kept his sense of humor. These adventures provide a depth of personal experience that enliven and enrich his stories along with wild dreams and rampaging imaginings that give no quarter twenty-four hours a day. Driven to the temperate climes by fierce Alberta Clippers, Tate has a passion for the tropics, palm trees, beaches, scuba dives, tiki bars, airplanes, machinery, firearms, sailboats, cuisine, wine, and all good things and people that make the little blue planet Earth such an exciting and amazing place to hang in this corner of the Universe. Tate has lived extensively in Costa Rica and the Far East, and loves the warm hospitality of Jamaica and the polite beauty of Japan.
