William E. Vance was born June 21, 1911, in Virginia, Alabama. He graduated from Marion Institute and did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Utah. He taught creative writing at the University of Alabama and worked for the Federal Aviation Administration in Utah before moving to Seattle in 1968. Vance's short stories first appeared in the early 1950s in magazines like Argosy and Esquire, before he turned to writing westerns and crime novels. He wrote more than 40 novels over the next 30 years under his own name and that of George Cassidy, including Hard Rock Rancher, No Man's Brand and Drifter's Gold. Vance died in Seattle, Washington, on May 1, 1986.