Question: What year was the author of The Merchanter novels born?

Context articles: Minami Ozaki
Tripoint (novel)
Finity's End
C. J. Cherryh
Neil Gaiman
Rimrunners
Merchanter's Luck
The Merchanter novels
Bernard Cornwell
Barbara Cartland

Minami Ozaki (尾崎南 , Ozaki Minami ) is a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist and illustrator of novels born on February 27, 1968 in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.
 She is famous for her best-selling manga series "Zetsuai 1989", which is considered to have redefined the Shōnen-ai/Yaoi genres in the late 1980s/early 1990s.
 Her old pen name is Ryo Minami (南亮 , Minami Ryo ) , but in 1986 she changed her pen name to Minami Ozaki.
 She sometimes uses other pseudonym—Minami Himemuro (姫室ミナミ ) .
Tripoint is a science fiction novel by the United States science fiction and fantasy author C. J. Cherryh, first published by Warner Books in September 1994.
 It is one of Cherryh's Merchanter novels and is set in the author's Alliance-Union universe.
Finity's End is a science fiction novel written by the American science fiction and fantasy author C. J. Cherryh.
 It is one of Cherryh's Merchanter novels, set in her Alliance-Union universe, in which humanity has split into three major power blocs: Union, the Merchanter's Alliance and Earth.
 "Finity's End" was shortlisted for a Locus Award in 1998.
Carolyn Janice Cherry (born September 1, 1942), better known by the pen name C. J. Cherryh, is an American writer of speculative fiction.
 She has written more than 60 books since the mid-1970s, including the Hugo Award-winning novels "Downbelow Station" (1981) and "Cyteen" (1988), both set in her Alliance-Union universe.
 She is known for "world building," depicting fictional realms with great realism supported by vast research in history, language, psychology, and archeology.
 Her series of fantasy novels set in the Alliance-Union universe, the Morgaine Stories, have sold in excess of 3 million copies.
Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman ( ; born Neil Richard Gaiman, 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and films.
 His notable works include the comic book series "The Sandman" and novels "Stardust", "American Gods", "Coraline", and "The Graveyard Book".
 He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals.
 He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, "The Graveyard Book" (2008).
 In 2013, "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards.
Rimrunners is a science fiction novel by American writer C. J. Cherryh, set in her Alliance-Union universe, in which humanity has split into three major power blocs: Union, the Merchanter's Alliance and Earth.
 Chronologically, the book follows immediately after the author's "Downbelow Station" and is one of Cherryh's series of "Merchanter" novels.
Merchanter's Luck is a science fiction novel by American writer C. J. Cherryh.
 It is set in the author's Alliance-Union universe, in which humanity has split into three major power blocs: Union, the Merchanter's Alliance and Earth.
 In the context of the Alliance-Union universe, the book is one of Cherryh's Merchanter novels.
The Merchanter novels are several loosely connected novels by science fiction and fantasy author C. J. Cherryh set in her Alliance-Union universe.
 These science fiction novels explore her merchanter subculture: the extended families that own and operate the ships that supply goods, transportation, news and trade to the various worlds and space stations in the human Earth, Alliance and Union space.
 The novels are related by a common setting and theme – a misfit (made so by circumstance) who finds his or her proper home – rather than plot and character; none of the books is a direct sequel of another in the conventional sense.
Bernard Cornwell, OBE (born 23 February 1944) is an English author of historical novels and a history of the Waterloo Campaign.
 He is best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe.
 Cornwell has written historical novels primarily of English history in five series and one series of contemporary thriller novels.
 A feature of his historical novels is an end note on how the novel matches or differs from history, for the re-telling, and what one might see at the modern site of the battles described in the novel.
 One series of historical novels is set in the American Civil War.
 He wrote a nonfiction book on the battle of Waterloo, in addition to the fictional story of the famous battle in the Sharpe Series.
 Two of the historical novel series have been adapted for television; the Sharpe television series by ITV and "The Last Kingdom" by BBC.
 He lives in the US with his wife.
 He alternates between Cape Cod, Massachusetts and Charleston, South Carolina.
Dame Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland DBE CStJ (9 July 1901 – 21 May 2000) was an English author of romance novels, one of the best-selling authors as well as one of the most prolific and commercially successful worldwide of the twentieth century.
 Her 723 novels were translated into 38 languages and she continues to be referenced in the "Guinness World Records" for the most novels published in a single year in 1976.
 As Barbara Cartland she is known for her numerous romantic novels but she also wrote under her married name of Barbara McCorquodale and briefly under the pseudonym of Marcus Belfry.
 She wrote more than 700 books, as well as plays, music, verse, drama, magazine articles and operetta, and was a prominent philanthropist.
 She reportedly sold more than 750 million copies.
 Other sources estimate her book sales at more than two billion copies.
 She specialised in 19th-century Victorian era pure romance.
 Her novels all featured portrait-style artwork, particularly the cover art, usually designed by Frances Marshall.