Anne Lyle was born in what is known to the tourist industry as "Robin Hood Country", and grew up fascinated by English history, folklore, and swashbuckling heroes. Unfortunately there was little demand in 1970s Nottingham for diminutive female swordswomen, so she studied sensible subjects like science and languages instead. It appears that although you can take the girl out of Sherwood Forest, you can't take Sherwood Forest out of the girl. She now spends every spare hour writing (or at least planning) fantasy fiction about spies, actors, outlaws and other folk on the fringes of society. Her Night's Masque series is set in an alternate history Elizabethan England, where the Virgin Queen married and had children while fanged and tattooed creatures from the New World walk the streets of London. Anne lives in Cambridge, a city full of medieval and Tudor buildings where cattle graze on the common land much as they did in Shakespeare's London.