Mark Timmony grew up on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. He's wanted to write for as long as he can remember and has several notebooks filled with illegible scribblings from childhood to prove it. The desire to write led to work as a bookseller in Sydney’s oldest genre specialist bookshop. There he began to make headway on his dreams of becoming a writer. Working with books he was lucky enough to meet many Australian fantasy authors – Karen Miller, Tony Shillitoe and Jennifer Fallon, to name a few – and was invited to be a beta-reader for a number of them. This unique experience offered him a peek ‘behind the scenes’ of novel writing with professionals, and went a long way in giving him the hands-on experience needed in how to structure a story, develop characters and build fantastic worlds, as well as offering insights into the business side – publishing and retail – of writing. These days you can still find him on the Northern Beaches, and when he's not writing the sequel to ‘The Blood of the Spear’, or reading, he's likely working at Australia’s local bookstore, or playing World of Warcraft.