Dean Koontz was born on July 9, 1945 in Everett, Pennsylvania. He received a degree in education from Shippensburg State College in 1967. A former high school English teacher as well as a teacher-counselor with the Appalachian Poverty Program, he began writing as a child to escape an ugly home life caused by his alcoholic father. A prolific writer at a young age, he had sold a dozen novels by the age of 25. Early in his career, he wrote under numerous pen names including David Axton, Brian Coffey, K. R. Dwyer, Leigh Nichols, Richard Paige, and Owen West. He is best known for the books written under his own name, many of which are bestsellers, including Midnight, Cold Fire, The Bad Place,… Hideaway, The Husband, Odd Hours, 77 Shadow Street, Innocence, and The City.
Kevin J. Anderson was born March 27, 1962, and raised in small town Oregon, Wisconsin. At eight years old, he wrote his first novel, three pages long on pink scrap paper on the typewriter in his father's den. He called it "The Injection," a story about a mad scientist who invents a formula that can bring anything to life. He submitted his first short story to a magazine when he was a freshman in high school, but it wasn't unitl two years later that he had a story accepted, for a magazine that paid only in copies. When he was a senior, he sold his first story for actual money, a whopping $12.50, but he never slowed down. He sold his first novel, Resurrection, Inc., by the time he turned 25.… Anderson worked in California for twelve years as a technical writer and editor at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. After he had published ten of his own science fiction novels to wide critical acclaim, he came to the attention of Lucasfilm, and was offered the chance at writing Star Wars novels. Anderson signed the largest science fiction contract in publishing history, to write a prequel trilogy to Frank Herbert's classic Sci-Fi novel Dune, coauthored with Herbert's son Brian. Anderson also broke the Guinness World Record for "Largest Single-Author Signing," passing the previous records set by Gen. Colin Powell and Howard Stern. Anderson's Star Wars Jedi Academy trilogy became the three top-selling science fiction novels of 1994. He has also completed numerous other projects for Lucasfilm, including the 14-volumes in the New York Times bestselling Young Jedi Knights series. His three original Star Wars anthologies are the bestselling Science Fiction anthologies of all time. Anderson is the author of three hardcover novels based on the X-Files; all three became international bestsellers, the first of which reached #1 on the London Sunday Times. Ground Zero was voted "Best Science Fiction Novel of 1995" by the readers of SFX magazine. Ruins hit the New York Times bestseller list, the first X-Files novel ever to do so, and was voted "Best Science Fiction Novel of 1996. Anderson's thriller Ignition, written with Doug Beason, has sold to Universal Studios as a major motion picture. Anderson and Beason's novels have been nominated for the Nebula Award and the American Physics Society's "Forum" award. Their other novels include Virtual Destruction, Fallout, and Ill Wind, which has been optioned by ABC TV for a television movie or miniseries. Anderson's solo work has garnered wide critical acclaim: Climbing Olympus was voted the best paperback Science Fiction novel of 1995 by Locus magazine, Resurrection, Inc. was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, and his novel Blindfold was the 1996 preliminary Nebula nominee. Anderson has written numerous bestselling comics, including Star Wars and Predator titles for Dark Horse, and X-Files for Topps. He has over eleven million books in print worldwide.