Garth Nix is the bestselling and award-winning author of more than seventeen novels, several role-playing magazine articles and scenarios, and an unpublished journal of the five-year Dungeons and Dragons campaign he ran between the ages of 11 and 16. A keen role-player in his student years, Garth was involved in running very large “free-form” role-playing events in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Australia, including the creation of a starport for 250 role-players in a school assembly hall. Long ago he also used to fight duels with PVC pipe swords while wearing a motorcycle helmet and several old leather coats that didn’t provide much protection but did slow everything down. Garth is also deeply interested in computers, the weather, military history, strategy and role-playing games, fantasy and science fiction, and many other highly geektastic subjects. Garth is married, with two children, and lives near a beach in Sydney, Australia.