John Peel, known as Jack, was born in Newcastle in 1943. He graduated from the Army Apprentice School as a Fitter and Turner in 1961, completing his trade training in the engine room of AV 1379 Tarra.

For the next seven years, he was employed as an engine room watchkeeper with the Royal Australian Engineer’s Transportation service, where he served on all four Landing Ships Medium of 32 Small Ship Squadron and the cargo vessel John Monash, as the ships visited Papua New Guinea, Borneo, Singapore and South Vietnam. He attained the rank of Temporary Warrant Officer in 1969.

Commissioned as a Captain in 1981, Jack served as the Cadre Officer 33 Terminal Squadron and then as the Officer Commanding the Army Maritime School at Chowder Bay from 1985 to 1987, retiring as Second in Command 10 Terminal Regiment in 1988.

C.S.E. Cooney lives and writes in the Borough of Queens, whose borders are water. She is an audiobook narrator, the singer/songwriter Brimstone Rhine, and author of World Fantasy Award-winning Bone Swans: Stories (Mythic Delirium 2015). Her short fiction can be found in Ellen Datlow's Mad Hatters and March Hares: All-New Stories from the World of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Jonathan Strahan's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 12, Paula Guran's 2016 The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas, five editions of Rich Horton's Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, Mike Allen's Clockwork Phoenix Anthology (3 and 5), Lightspeed Magazine, Strange Horizons, Apex, Uncanny Magazine Black Gate, Papaveria Press, GigaNotoSaurus, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, and elsewhere.