Jacquin Sanders was born September 14, 1922, in Springfield, Ohio. He was a rifleman in the infantry during World War II and lived in Paris afterwards on the GI Bill. He wrote three novels before going into journalism at age 40, first for Newsweek and then for the New York Daily News. In 1982, he became a columnist at the St. Petersburg Times, retiring in 2000 at 78. Sanders' three novels include Freakshow (set in a carnival), The Fortune Finders (a western) and Look to Your Geese (a New England farce). A work of nonfiction, A Night Before Christmas, described the Christmas Eve, 1944, sinking of the troop ship Leopoldville, which Sanders witnessed from the deck of another troopship. He died December 20, 2001, in Largo, Florida.