Martha Wells was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1964, and has a BA in anthropology from Texas A&M University. She is the author of ten previous novels, including The Cloud Roads, The Element of Fire, Wheel of the Infinite, the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy, and the Nebula-nominated The Death of the Necromancer. She has also had short fiction published in Realms of Fantasy, Black Gate Magazine, Lone Star Stories, and the Tsunami Relief anthology Elemental, and has articles in the non-fiction anthologies Farscape Forever and Mapping the World of Harry Potter. She lives in College Station, Texas, with her husband.