Troubletwisters (27 page)

GARTH NIX
was born in Melbourne, grew up in Canberra, and has lived in various parts of Sydney for the last twenty-four years. None of these moves were because he blew his house up with uncontrolled troubletwister Gifts. However, Garth did learn to blow things up when he was much younger and served as a part-time soldier in an Assault Pioneer platoon of the Australian Army Reserve. He also learned the importance of ancient texts when he worked as a bookseller, book sales representative, book editor and literary agent. These were his day jobs while he was also writing at night, utilising his Gift of night vision to save on electricity bills. Despite constant international warden tasks to keep The Evil contained, Garth has somehow also found time to write more than twenty books, including the bestselling The Keys to the Kingdom series and the Old Kingdom Trilogy, numerous short stories and other works. He has two troubletwisters of his own, but no Warden Companion cats, though he does live with a couple of budgies who know too much. More information can be found in
A Compendium of The Evil
or, perhaps more easily, at www.garthnix.com.

SEAN WILLIAMS
was born in a small coastal town that no one has ever heard of. No, not Portland, but his father’s family did come from the Portland in Victoria, where Sean first read
The Lord of the Rings
. That formative experience led him to write stories of his own, and he has spent most of his life since doing exactly that, producing forty novels and collections, eighty shorter works, and several disreputable poems in quick succession. If he has a particular Gift, it is to write through pretty much anything, even attacks of the hairy spiders that often infest his study, and so swiftly that some of his books appear to have been finished before they were started (rather suspiciously). He lives in Adelaide, South Australia, where he likes to DJ at the odd party and to cook the even odder brussels sprout curry – Gifts his wife and family probably wish he didn’t exercise quite so often. Details of further exploits can be found at www.seanwilliams.com.