aka Ann Coombs, Nina Coombs, Nina Coombs Pykare, Nina Porter, Nora Powers

Like her on Facebook! Learn more on her website! Marion Chesney Gibbons aka: Ann Fairfax, Jennie Tremaine, Helen Crampton, Marion Chesney, Charlotte Ward, Sarah Chester. Marion Chesney was born on 1936 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, and started her first job as a bookseller in charge of the fiction department in John Smith & Sons Ltd. While bookselling, by chance, she got an offer from the Scottish Daily Mail to review variety shows and quickly rose to be their theatre critic. She left Smith’s to join Scottish Field magazine as a secretary in the advertising department, without any shorthand or typing, but quickly got the job of fashion editor instead. She then moved to the Scottish Daily Express where she reported mostly on crime. This was followed by a move to Fleet Street to the Daily Express where she became chief woman reporter. After marrying Harry Scott Gibbons and having a son, Charles, Marion went to the United States where Harry had been offered the job of editor of the Oyster Bay Guardian. When that didn’t work out, they went to Virginia and Marion worked as a waitress in a greasy spoon on the Jefferson Davies in Alexandria while Harry washed the dishes. Both then got jobs on Rupert Murdoch’s new tabloid, The Star, and moved to New York. Anxious to spend more time at home with her small son, Marion, urged by her husband, started to write historical romances in 1977. After she had written over 100 of them under her maiden name, Marion Chesney, and under the pseudonyms: Ann Fairfax, Jennie Tremaine, Helen Crampton, Charlotte Ward, and Sarah Chester, she getting fed up with 1714 to 1910, she began to write detectives stories in 1985 under the pseudonym of M. C. Beaton. On a trip from the States to Sutherland on holiday, a course at a fishing school inspired the first Constable Hamish Macbeth story. They returned to Britain and bought a croft house and croft in Sutherland where Harry reared a flock of black sheep. But Charles was at school, in London so when he finished and both tired of the long commute to the north of Scotland, they moved to the Cotswolds where Agatha Raisin was created.

Nina Pykare aka Ann Coombs, Nina Coombs, Nan Pemberton, Nina Porter, Nora Powers, Regina Towers Nina Coombs Pykare has published 54 novels in the romance, Regency, inspiration, historical, contemporary, gothic, and mystery fields under a variety of pseudonyms. Nina has sold hundreds of short stories and articles, as well as puzzles and poems for children of all ages. Some of the latter were written for her four sons and daughter, and now for four grandsons, five granddaughters, and one great-granddaughter. Nina taught a novel writing class for Writer's Digest from 1988 to 2006 and has also taught classes at nearby schools and the YWCA. She was married for 20 years, has been divorced longer than that, and still believes love is the most important thing in the world.

Ever since I learned to read, I have loved books. For almost as long, I have made up tales. I’ve written horrible poetry, better short stories, adequate commercials, educational and industrial film narration, and very forgettable screenplays. Once I learned how to make a story last longer than a few paragraphs I moved on to novels, and there I stayed. I've written forty-three to date. In addition to my website, I have a (sporadic) blog at http://maggiemackeever.wordpress.com/