Biographical details about Magnus Flyte are sometimes conflicting. He appears to have operated under several identities, and may have ties to one or more intelligence organizations, including the CIA and a radical group of Antarctic separatists. A copy of the manuscript of City of Dark Magic, written on stationery from the Hotel La Mamounia in Marrakech using a manual typewriter, was received by mail at the offices of Penguin Books in New York in January 2012. It was postmarked on the Isle of Mull. On the back of the envelope were some marks in pencil: "snow bunting, whooper swan, loch torr, tawny owl, cailaich." It is not known if Magnus Flyte himself, who has shown an interest in the migratory patterns of terns (but not buntings), mailed the manuscript, or a birdwatching friend simply mailed it from there while on vacation.After the uproar over the publication of City of Dark Magic, Mr. Flyte retreated to his dacha in the Urals, where he enjoys exploring underground tributaries of the Ufa, observing the mating habits of the spotted nutcracker, and smelting. It is there that he penned the sequel to City of Dark Magic, City of Lost Dreams, using a fountain pen and scraps of vellum. Penguin editors reported that the first draft smelled strongly of sheep and vodka.Mr. Flyte is currently at work on a half-hour television comedy about sixteenth-century ethnographer Sigismund von Herberstein, entitled Ural I Love.Meg Howrey and Christina Lynch are the women behind the man who is, or isn't, Magnus Flyte. Howrey is a former dancer with the Joffrey II and the winner of an Ovation Award. She is the author of the novels The Cranes Dance and Blind Sight and lives in Los Angeles. Lynch is a television writer and former Milan correspondent for W magazine. She lives near Sequoia National Park in California.