Lydia Colby

William Edward Daniel Ross was born on November 16, 1912 in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, son of Laura (Brooks) and William Edward Ross. In 1930, while he studied, he began his career as the manager of an acting company with which he also acted. Very early in his professional life, he was awarded the Dominion Drama Festival Prize for Playwriting. During the Second World War, he served with British Entertainment Services.

He married Charlotte McCormack, who died in 1959, and remarried in 1960, with the nurse Marilyn Ann Clark. He began writing short-stories in 1950s, and novels after his second marriage. Her wife was the first reader of his works. He wrote popular romances and gothic fiction as W. E. D. Ross and Dan Ross and under a variety of mostly female pseudonyms such as Jane Rossiter, Leslie Ames, Ellen Randolph, Ann Gilmer, Rose Williams, Rose Dana, Clarissa Ross, Marilyn Ross, Jan Daniels, Charlotte McCormack, Ruth Dorset, Miriam Leslie, Amber Ross, Dana Ross, Laura Frances Brooks, Lydia Colby, Diana Randall, and Marilyn Carter. He started writing erotic novels as Olin Ross, and Western novels as Dan Roberts and Tex Steele. He died on November 1, 1995 in his native Saint John, at 82, survived by his wife.