Melvyn "Mel" Grant (born 1944) is an English artist and illustrator. Trained traditionally, he originally worked with oil paints, but in the late 1990s Grant switched to creating most of his work digitally with a digitizing tablet and the software Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. Mel now lives and works on the coast in the Southeast of England, although the bulk of his work is commissioned internationally. Grant was born in London, England. Always interested in illustrated arts, he attended the Brassey School of Fine Art from the age of twelve before dropping out at the age of eighteen. After studying electronics and working in a variety of short-term jobs, including as a guitarist, Grant travelled throughout Europe to improve his painting style. Upon his return to England, he worked as an illustrator in various media, including animation. Soon he found a niche creating covers for books, mostly fantasy work, but also science fiction. He worked in various styles, ranging from cute children's artwork to dark and realistic adult images. Grant has produced illustrations for many books, including the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks FF 3: Deathtrap Dungeon, FF9: Shamutanti Hills, FF 11: Khare Cityport of Traps, and FF13: The Seven Serpents, Terry Pratchett's Where's My Cow?, The Demonata series by Darren Shan and the Bartimaeus Sequence (USA) by Jonathan Stroud. He is also known for being one of the artists associated with Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie. He designed the album covers for Iron Maiden's Fear of the Dark, Virtual XI, Death on the Road, The Final Frontier and From Fear to Eternity, as well as the single "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg", making him the only artist other than Derek Riggs to have been used to draw Eddie on more than one Iron Maiden album. Grant designed a number of covers for video games, including Baal and Captain Fizz Meets the Blaster-Trons.

Born Terence David John Pratchett, Sir Terry Pratchett sold his first story when he was thirteen, which earned him enough money to buy a second-hand typewriter. His first novel, a humorous fantasy entitled The Carpet People, appeared in 1971 from the publisher Colin Smythe. Terry worked for many years as a journalist and press officer, writing in his spare time and publishing a number of novels, including his first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, in 1983. In 1987, he turned to writing full time. There are over 40 books in the Discworld series, of which four are written for children. The first of these, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, won the Carnegie Medal. A non-Discworld book, Good Omens, his 1990 collaboration with Neil Gaiman, has been a longtime bestseller and was reissued in hardcover by William Morrow in early 2006 (it is also available as a mass market paperback - Harper Torch, 2006 - and trade paperback - Harper Paperbacks, 2006). In 2008, Harper Children's published Terry's standalone non-Discworld YA novel, Nation. Terry published Snuff in October 2011. Regarded as one of the most significant contemporary English-language satirists, Pratchett has won numerous literary awards, was named an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) “for services to literature” in 1998, and has received honorary doctorates from the University of Warwick in 1999, the University of Portsmouth in 2001, the University of Bath in 2003, the University of Bristol in 2004, Buckinghamshire New University in 2008, the University of Dublin in 2008, Bradford University in 2009, the University of Winchester in 2009, and The Open University in 2013 for his contribution to Public Service. In Dec. of 2007, Pratchett disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. On 18 Feb, 2009, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He was awarded the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award in 2010. Sir Terry Pratchett passed away on 12th March 2015.