Valerie Sherwood

anne Hines was born in Moorefield, West Virginia, the daughter of Llewellyn Brown McNeill and Bess Heiskell McNeil. She grew up in a traditional family, but dreamed of doing something more than marrying and becoming a housewife. She married Edward Thomas Hines (March 2, 1914 - Dec. 8, 2001) in 1943 and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, but she was writing while she traveled with her husband between their five homes along the East Coast.

She worked as a reporter and fashion magazine illustrator before turning to fiction and becoming a novelist. Published since 1973, she penned gothic novels under her real name and romance novels as Valerie Sherwood and Rosamond Royal until 1991. She won the Romantic Times 1987-1988 Career Achievement Award in the category of "historical adventure".