Mary Ann Winkowski was born in Cleveland and still lives there with her husband, Ted, and Just Fred, their red-and-white cat. She also has two grown daughters. Born with the ability to see, hear, and talk to earthbound spirits, Mary Ann has helped people all over the world to resolve problems with these spirits and negative energy. A consultant on the CBS television show Ghost Whisperer, she is also the author of When Ghosts Speak; the fiction series The Ghost Files, which includes The Book of Illumination and The Ice Cradle; and As Alive, So Dead with David Powers.

David Powers earned a degree in creative writing from Ohio University. He has since worked as a freelance music critic, as a section editor at an alternative newsweekly, and as a technical writer, creating help files for a leading software developer. His fiction has appeared under the name David Christopher in magazines such as Lost Worlds, The MacGuffin, and England's Enigmatic Tales. As David Christopher, he also wrote As Alive, So Dead with Mary Ann Winkowski. He went on to launch OH Hellmouth, a fictional accounting of ?weird? Ohio presented in a blog format.