About the Author

Marie J. Spinella-Phillips Born in 1957, in Huntington, on Long Island, Marie J. S. Phillips has been driven by an insatiable love of writing, art, and the sciences since very early childhood. Her love of animals fueled her desire to write, always appearing as stories from the non-human point of view. She invented her very first character at six years old, creating picture books with a tree as the main protagonist. She included, on the inside covers, her very own publishing logo, complete with rainbow and shining sun! In college, she majored in Art and Earth Sciences, where inspiration fired her vivid imagination, planting the seeds for her Furlites of Aroriel novels, driving her into the unique and futuristic world of Fantasy/Science Fiction. Over the years, she developed THE FURLITES OF ARORIEL stories and KHAN: A MAINE COON, as well as THE WHITE DRAGONS OF SUVWILUR & OTHER STORIES. She wrote during breaks at work, at night at home, in any bit of spare time she found. Buying a home and marrying her High School beau never stopped the steady, but slow evolution of her craft. Other hobbies such as showing, collecting, and customizing model horses, as well as gardening, and photography, integrated well with her drive to complete her books. In OLD GENT, Marie returns to the roots of her writing life, penning this semi-fictional biography about a century-old beloved Norway Spruce tree which graced the property she and her husband bought many years ago, showing his long life, as only she can, from the tree's point of view. Owned by two cats, one of which is a Maine Coon cat, Mrs. Phillips and her husband live in the rolling hills of northwestern Connecticut.