Ann Tonsor Zeddies spent her first three summers on a mountaintop in Idaho, and wanted to be a cowboy until she realized that the frontier had moved off the planet. Her interest in biology began at an early age, when she collected a bucket of assorted amphibians and turned them loose in the tent where she was living with her parents and younger brother. Her brother became a professional biologist; Ann chose to deal with strange life forms by writing science fiction.

While working on earlier novels, Typhon's Children and Riders of Leviathan (written as Toni Anzetti), she swam in all of the Great Lakes, and snorkeled in the Pacific, between the Mariana Trench and the volcanic island of Pagan. She has camped in the Badlands, and ridden horses in the Huron National Forest and the vineyards of Quercy. Along with her husband and two of their four children, she earned a black belt in tae kwon do. After stays in Michigan, Kansas, and Texas, she now lives in Pennsylvania.