MALLUCe: (aka John Johnstone, Jr.) Geeky son of billionaire parents until he kills them for their fortune and reinvents himself as the steampunk vampire Malluce. In Darkfever, he teams up with Darroc, the Lord Master, who teaches him to eat Unseelie flesh for the strength and enormous s.e.xual stamina and appet.i.te it confers. He"s wounded in battle by Mac"s Spear of Destiny. Because he"d been eating Unseelie, the lethal p.r.i.c.k of the Fae blade caused parts of him to die, killing flesh but not his body, trapping him in a half-rotted, agonizing sh.e.l.l of a body. He appears to her as the Grim Reaper in Bloodfever, and after psychologically tormenting her, abducts Mac and holds her prisoner in a h.e.l.lish grotto beneath the Burren in Ireland, where he tortures and nearly kills her. Barrons kills him, and saves Mac by feeding her Unseelie flesh, changing her forever.
THE GUARDIANS: Originally Dublin"s police force, the Gardai, under the command of Inspector Jayne, eat Unseelie to obtain heightened strength, speed, and acuity, and hunt all Fae. They"ve learned to use iron bullets to temporarily wound them and iron bars to contain them. Most Fae can be significantly weakened by iron. If applied properly, iron can prevent a Fae from being able to sift.
INSPECTOR O"DUFFY: Original Garda on Alina Lane"s murder case, brother-in-law to Inspector Jayne. He was killed in Bloodfever, his throat slit while holding a sc.r.a.p of paper with Mac"s name and address on it. It is currently unknown who killed him.
INSPECTOR JAYNE: Garda who takes over Alina Lane"s murder case after Inspector O"Duffy, Jayne"s brother-in-law, is killed. Big, rawboned Irishman who looks like Liam Neeson, he tails Mac and generally complicates her life. Initially, he"s more interested in what happened to O"Duffy than solving Alina"s case, but Mac treats him to Unseelie-laced tea and opens his eyes to what"s going on in their city and world. Jayne joins the fight against the Fae and transforms the Gardai into the New Guardians, a ruthless army of ex-policemen who eat Unseelie, battle Fae, and protect humans. Jayne is a good man in a hard position. Although he and his men can capture the Fae, they can"t kill them without either Mac or Dani"s weapon. In Iced, Jayne earns Dani"s eternal wrath by stealing her sword when she"s too injured to fight back.
CHARACTERS OF UNKNOWN GENUS.
K"VRUCK: Allegedly the most ancient of the Unseelie caste of Royal Hunters-although it is not substantiated that he is truly Unseelie. He was once the Unseelie King"s favored companion and "steed" as he traveled worlds on its great black wings. Enormous as a small skysc.r.a.per, vaguely resembling a dragon, it"s coal black, leathery, and icy, with eyes like huge orange furnaces. When it flies, it churns black frosty flakes in the air and liquid ice streams in its wake. It has a special affinity for Mac and appears to her at odd moments as it senses the king inside her (via the Sinsar Dubh). When K"Vruck kills, it is the ultimate death, extinguishing life so completely it"s forever erased from the karmic cycle. To be K"Vrucked is to be removed completely from existence as if you"ve never been, no trace, no residue. Mac used K"Vruck to free Barrons"s son. K"vruck is the only being (known so far) capable of killing the immortal Nine.
SWEEPER: A collector of powerful, broken things, it resembles a giant trash heap of metal cogs and gears. First encountered by the Unseelie King shortly after he lost his concubine and descended into a period of madness and grief. The Sweeper traveled with him for a time, studying him, or perhaps seeing if he, too, could be collected and tinkered with. According to the Unseelie King, it fancies itself a G.o.d.
ZEWS: Acronym for Zombie Eating Wraiths, so named by Dani O"Malley. Hulking anorexic vulturelike creatures, they are five to six feet tall, with gaunt, hunched bodies and heavily cowled faces. They appear to be wearing cobwebbed, black robes but it is actually their skin. They have exposed bone at their sleeves and pale smudges inside their cowls. In Burned, Mac catches a glimpse of metal where their faces should be but doesn"t get a good look.
PLACES.
ARLINGTON ABBEY: An ancient stone abbey located nearly two hours from Dublin, situated on a thousand acres of prime farmland. The mystically fortified abbey houses an Order of Sidhe-Seers gathered from six bloodlines of Irish women born with the ability to see the Fae and their realms. The abbey was built in the seventh century and is completely self-sustaining with multiple artesian wells, livestock, and gardens. According to historical records, the land occupied by the abbey was previously a church, and before that a sacred circle of stones, and long before that a fairy shian, or mound. Sidhe-seer legend suggests the Unseelie King himself sp.a.w.ned their order, mixing his blood with that of six Irish houses, to create protectors for the one thing he should never have made-the Sinsar Dubh.
ASHFORD, GEORGIA: MacKayla Lane"s small, rural hometown in the Deep South.
BARRONS BOOKS & BAUBLES: Located on the outskirts of Temple Bar in Dublin, Barrons Books & Baubles is an Old World bookstore previously owned by Jericho Barrons, now owned by MacKayla Lane. It shares design characteristics with the Lello Bookstore in Portugal, but is somewhat more elegant and refined. Due to the location of a large Sifting Silver in the study on the first floor, the bookstore"s dimensions can shift from as few as four stories to as many as seven, and rooms on the upper levels often reposition themselves. It is where MacKayla Lane calls home.
BARRONS"S GARAGE: Located directly behind Barrons Books & Baubles, it houses a collection of expensive cars. Far beneath it, accessible only through the heavily warded Silver in the bookstore, are Jericho Barrons"s living quarters.
THE BRICKYARD: The bar in Ashford, Georgia, where MacKayla Lane bartended before she came to Dublin.
CHESTER"S NIGHTCLUB: An enormous underground club of chrome and gla.s.s located at 939 Revemal Street. Chester"s is owned by one of Barrons"s a.s.sociates, Ryodan. The upper levels are open to the public, the lower levels contain the Nine"s residences and their private clubs. Since the walls between man and Fae fell, Chester"s has become the hot spot in Dublin for Fae and humans to mingle.
DARK ZONE: An area that has been taken over by the Shades, deadly Unseelie that suck the life from humans, leaving only a husk of skin and indigestible matter such as eyegla.s.ses, wallets, and medical implants. During the day it looks like an everyday abandoned, run-down neighborhood. Once night falls it"s a death trap. The largest known Dark Zone in Dublin is adjacent to Barrons Books & Baubles and is nearly twenty by thirteen city blocks.
FAERY: A general term encompa.s.sing the many realms of the Fae.
HALL OF ALL DAYS: The "airport terminal" of the Sifting Silvers where one can choose which mirror to enter to travel to other worlds and realms. Fashioned of gold from floor to ceiling, the endless corridor is lined with billions of mirrors that are portals to alternate universes and times, and exudes a chilling spatial-temporal distortion that makes a visitor feel utterly inconsequential. Time isn"t linear in the hall, it"s malleable and slippery, and a visitor can get permanently lost in memories that never were and dreams of futures that will never be. One moment you feel terrifyingly alone, the next as if an endless chain of paper-doll versions of oneself is unfolding sideways, holding cutout construction-paper hands with thousands of different feet in thousands of different worlds, all at the same time. Compounding the many dangers of the hall, when the Silvers were corrupted by Cruce"s curse (intended to bar entry to the Unseelie King), the mirrors were altered and now the image they present is no longer a guarantee of what"s on the other side. A lush rain forest may lead to a parched, cracked desert, a tropical oasis to a world of ice, but one can"t count on total opposites either.
THE RIVER LIFFEY: The river that divides Dublin into south and north sections, and supplies most of Dublin"s water.
TEMPLE BAR DISTRICT: An area in Dublin also known simply as "Temple Bar," in which the Temple Bar Pub is located, along with an endless selection of boisterous drinking establishments including the famed Oliver St. John Gogarty, the Quays Bar, the Foggy Dew, the Brazen Head, Buskers, The Purty Kitchen, The Auld Dubliner, and so on. On the south bank of the River Liffey, Temple Bar (the district) sprawls for blocks, and has two meeting squares that used to be overflowing with tourists and partiers. Countless street musicians, great restaurants and shops, local bands, and raucous Stag and Hen parties made Temple Bar the craic-filled center of the city.
TEMPLE BAR PUB: A quaint, famous pub named after Sir William Temple who once lived there. Founded in 1840, it squats bright red and cozy, draped with string lights at the corner of Temple Bar Street and Temple Lane, and rambles from garden to alcove to main room. The famous pub boasts a first-rate whiskey collection, a beer garden for smoking, legendary Dublin Bay oysters, perfectly stacked Guinness, terrific atmosphere, and the finest traditional Irish music in the city.
TRINITY COLLEGE: Founded in 1592, located on College Green, recognized as one of the finest universities in the world, it houses a library that contains over 4.5 million printed volumes including spectacular works such as the Book of Kells. It"s ranked in the world"s top one hundred universities for physics and mathematics, with state-of-the-art laboratories and equipment. Dancer does much of his research on the now abandoned college campus.
UNSEELIE PRISON: Located in the Unseelie King"s realm, close to his fortress of black ice, the prison once held all Unseelie captives for over half a million years in a stark, arctic prison of ice. When the walls between Man and Faery were destroyed by Darroc (a banished Seelie Prince with a vendetta against the Seelie Queen) all the Unseelie were freed to invade the human realms.
THE WHITE MANSION: Located inside the Silvers, the house that the Unseelie King built for his beloved concubine. Enormous, ever-changing, the many halls and rooms in the mansion rearrange themselves at will.
THINGS.
AMULET: Also called the One True Amulet, see The Four Unseelie Hallows.
AMULETS, THE THREE LESSER: Amulets created prior to the One True Amulet, these objects are capable of weaving and sustaining nearly impenetrable illusion when used together. Currently in possession of Cruce.
COMPACT: Agreement negotiated between Queen Aoibheal and the MacKeltar clan (Keltar means hidden barrier or mantle) long ago to keep the realms of mankind and Fae separate. The Seelie Queen taught them to t.i.the and perform rituals that would reinforce the walls that were compromised when the original queen used a portion of them to create the Unseelie prison.
CRIMSON RUNES: This enormously powerful and complex magic formed the foundation of the walls of the Unseelie prison and is offered by the Sinsar Dubh to MacKayla on several occasions to use to protect herself. All Fae fear them. When the walls between Man and Fae began to weaken long ago, the Seelie Queen tapped into the prison walls, siphoning some of their power, which she used to reinforce the boundaries between worlds ... thus dangerously weakening the prison walls. It was at that time the first Unseelie began to escape. The more one struggles against the crimson runes, the stronger they grow, feeding off the energy expended in the victim"s effort to escape. MacKayla used them in Shadowfever to seal the Sinsar Dubh shut until Cruce, posing as V"lane, persuaded her to remove them. The beast form of Jericho Barrons eats these runes, and seems to consider them a delicacy.
CUFF OF CRUCE: A cuff made of silver and gold, set with bloodred stones; an ancient Fae relic that protects the wearer against all Fae and many other creatures. Cruce claims he made it, not the king, and that he gave it to the king as a gift to give his lover. According to Cruce, its powers were dual: it not only protected the concubine from all threats but allowed her to summon him by merely touching it, thinking of the king, and wishing for his presence.
DOLMEN: A single-chamber megalithic tomb constructed of three or more upright stones supporting a large, flat, horizontal capstone. Dolmens are common in Ireland, especially around the Burren and Connemara. The Lord Master used a dolmen in a ritual of dark magic to open a doorway between realms and bring through Unseelie.
THE DREAMING: It"s where all hopes, fantasies, illusions, and nightmares of sentient beings come to be or go to rest, whichever you prefer to believe. No one knows where the Dreaming came from or who created it. It is far more ancient even than the Fae. Since Cruce cursed the Silvers and the Hall of All Days was corrupted, the Dreaming can be accessed via the hall, though with enormous difficulty.
ELIXIR OF LIFE: Both the Seelie Queen and Unseelie King have a version of this powerful potion. The Seelie Queen"s version can make a human immortal (though not bestow the grace and power of being Fae). It is currently unknown what the king"s version does, but reasonable to expect that, as the imperfect Song used to fashion his court, it is also flawed in some way.
THE FOUR STONES: Chiseled from the blue-black walls of the Unseelie prison, these four stones have the ability to contain the Sinsar Dubh in place if positioned properly, rendering its power inert, allowing it to be transported safely. The stones contain the Book"s magic and immobilize it completely, preventing it from being able to possess the person transporting it. They are capable of immobilizing it in any form, including MacKayla Lane as she has the Book inside her. They are etched with ancient runes and react with many other Fae objects of power. When united, they sing a lesser Song of Making. Not nearly as powerful as the crimson runes, they can contain only the Sinsar Dubh.
GLAMOUR: Illusion cast by the Fae to camouflage their true appearance. The more powerful the Fae, the more difficult it is to penetrate its disguise. Average humans see only what the Fae want them to see and are subtly repelled from b.u.mping into or brushing against it by a small perimeter of spatial distortion that is part of the Fae glamour.
THE HALLOWS: Eight ancient artifacts created by the Fae possessing enormous power. There are four Seelie and four Unseelie hallows.
The Four Seelie Hallows THE SPEAR OF LUISNE: Also known as the Spear of Luin, Spear of Longinus, Spear of Destiny, the Flaming Spear, it is one of two hallows capable of killing Fae. Currently in possession of MacKayla Lane.
THE SWORD OF LUGH: Also known as the Sword of Light, the second hallow capable of killing Fae. Currently in possession of Danielle O"Malley.
THE CAULDRON: Also called the Cauldron of Forgetting. The Fae are subject to a type of madness that sets in at advanced years. They drink from the cauldron to erase all memory and begin fresh. None but the Scribe, Cruce, and the Unseelie King, who have never drunk from the cauldron, know the true history of their race. Currently located at the Seelie Court. Cruce stole a cup from the Cauldron of Forgetting and tricked the concubine/Aoibheal into drinking it, thereby erasing all memory of the king and her life before the moment the cup touched her lips.
THE STONE: Little is known of this Seelie hallow.
The Four Unseelie Hallows THE AMULET: Created by the Unseelie King for his concubine so she could manipulate reality as well as a Fae. Fashioned of gold, silver, sapphires, and onyx, the gilt "cage" of the amulet houses an enormous clear stone of unknown composition. It can be used by a person of epic will to impact and reshape perception. The list of past owners is legendary, including Merlin, Boudicca, Joan of Arc, Charlemagne, and Napoleon. This amulet is capable of weaving illusion that will deceive even the Unseelie King. In Shadowfever, MacKayla Lane used it to defeat the Sinsar Dubh. Currently stored in Barrons"s lair beneath the garage, locked away for safekeeping.
THE SILVERS: An elaborate network of mirrors created by the Unseelie King, once used as the primary method of Fae travel between realms. The central hub for the Silvers is the Hall of All Days, an infinite, gilded corridor where time is not linear, filled with mirrors of a.s.sorted shapes and sizes that are portals to other worlds, places, and times. Before Cruce cursed the Silvers, whenever a traveler stepped through a mirror at a perimeter location, he was instantly translated to the hall, where he could then choose a new destination from the images the mirrors displayed. After Cruce cursed the Silvers, the mirrors in the hall were compromised and no longer accurately display their true destinations. It"s highly dangerous to travel within the Silvers.
THE BOOK: See also Sinsar Dubh (she-suh DOO). A fragment of the Unseelie King himself, a sentient, psychopathic book of enormous, dark magic created when the king tried to expel the corrupt arts with which he"d tampered, trying to re-create the Song of Making. The Book was originally a nonsentient, spelled object but in the way of Fae it evolved and over time became sentient, living, conscious. When it did, like all Unseelie created via an imperfect Song, it was obsessed by a desire to complete itself, to obtain a corporeal body for its consciousness, to become like others of its kind. It usually presents itself in one of three forms: an innocuous hardcover book; a thick, gilded, magnificent ancient tome with runes and locks; or a monstrous amorphous beast. It temporarily achieves corporeality by possessing humans, but the human host rejects it and the body self-destructs quickly. The Sinsar Dubh usually toys with its hosts, uses them to vent its s.a.d.i.s.tic rage, then kills them and jumps to a new body (or jumps to a new body and uses it to kill them). The closest it has ever come to obtaining a body was by imprinting a full copy of itself in Mac as an unformed fetus while it possessed her mother. Since the Sinsar Dubh"s presence has been inside Mac from the earliest stages of her life, her body chemistry doesn"t sense it as an intruder and reject it. She can survive its possession without it destroying her. Still, the original Sinsar Dubh craves a body of its own and for Mac to embrace her copy so that it will finally be flesh and blood and have a mate.
THE BOX: Little is known of this Unseelie Hallow. Legend says the Unseelie King created it for his concubine.
THE HAVEN: High Council and advisors to the Grand Mistress of the abbey, made up of the seven most talented, powerful sidhe-seers. Twenty years ago it was led by Mac"s mother, Isla O"Connor, but the Haven got wind of Rowena tampering with black arts and suspected she"d been seduced by the Sinsar Dubh, which was locked away beneath the abbey in a heavily warded cavern. They discovered she"d been entering the forbidden chamber, talking with it. They formed a second, secret, Haven to monitor Rowena"s activities, which included Rowena"s own daughter and Isla"s best friend, Kayleigh. The Haven was right, Rowena had been corrupted and ultimately freed the Sinsar Dubh. It is unknown who carried it from the abbey the night the Book escaped or where it was for the next two decades.
IFP: Interdimensional Fairy Pothole, created when the walls between Man and Faery fell, and chunks of reality fragmented. They exist also within the network of Silvers, the result of Cruce"s curse. Translucent, funnel-shaped, with narrow bases and wide tops, they are difficult to see and drift unless tethered. There is no way to determine what type of environment exists inside one until you"ve stepped through, extreme climate excepted.
IRON: Fe on the periodic table, painful to Fae. Iron bars can contain nonsifting Fae. Properly spelled iron can constrain a sifting Fae to a degree. Iron cannot kill a Fae.
MACHALO: Invented by MacKayla Lane, a bike helmet with LED lights affixed to it. Designed to protect the wearer from the vampiric Shades by casting a halo of light all around the body.
NULL: A sidhe-seer with the power to freeze a Fae with the touch of his or her hands (MacKayla Lane has this talent). While frozen, a Nulled Fae is completely powerless, but the higher and more powerful the caste of Fae, the shorter the length of time it stays immobilized. It can still see, hear, and think while frozen, making it very dangerous to be in its vicinity when unfrozen.
POSTE HASTE, INC.: A bicycling courier service headquartered in Dublin that is actually the Order of Sidhe-Seers. Founded by Rowena, she established an international branch of PHI in countries all over the world to stay apprised of all developments globally.
PRI-YA: A human who is s.e.xually addicted to and enslaved by the Fae. The royal castes of Fae are so s.e.xual and erotic that s.e.x with them is addictive and destructive to the human mind. It creates a painful, debilitating, insatiable need in a human. The royal castes can, if they choose, diminish their impact during s.e.x and make it merely stupendous. But if they don"t, it overloads human senses and turns the human into a s.e.x addict, incapable of thought or speech, capable only of serving the s.e.xual pleasures of whomever is their master. Since the walls fell, many humans have been turned Pri-ya and society is trying to deal with these wrecked humans in a way that doesn"t involve incarcerating them in padded cells, in mindless misery.
SHAMROCK: This slightly misshapen three-leaf clover is the ancient symbol of the sidhe-seers, who are charged with the mission to See, Serve, and Protect mankind from the Fae. In Bloodfever, Rowena shares the history of the emblem with Mac: "Before it was the clover of Saint Patrick"s trinity, it was ours. It"s the emblem of our Order. It"s the symbol our ancient sisters used to carve on their doors and dye into banners millennia ago when they moved to a new village. It was our way of letting the inhabitants know who we were and what we were there to do. When people saw our sign, they declared a time of great feasting and celebrated for a fortnight. They welcomed us with gifts of their finest food, wine, and men. They held tournaments to compete to bed us. It is not a clover at all, but a vow. You see how these two leaves make a sideways figure eight, like a horizontal Mobius strip? They are two S"s, one right side up, one upside down, ends meeting. The third leaf and stem is an upright P. The first S is for See, the second for Serve, the P for Protect. The shamrock itself is the symbol of Eire, the great Ireland. The Mobius strip is our pledge of guardianship eternal. We are the sidhe-seers and we watch over Mankind. We protect them from the Old Ones. We stand between this world and all the others."
SIFTING: Fae method of travel. The higher ranking, most powerful Fae are able to translocate from place to place at the speed of thought. Once they could travel through time as well as place, but Aoibheal stripped that power from them for repeated offenses.
SINSAR DUBH: Originally designed as an ensorcelled tome, it was intended to be the inert repository or dumping ground for all the Unseelie King"s arcane knowledge of a flawed, toxic Song of Making. It was with this knowledge he created the Unseelie Court and castes. The book contains an enormous amount of dangerous magic that can create and destroy worlds. Like the king, its power is nearly limitless. Unfortunately, as with all Fae things, the Book, drenched with magic, changed and evolved until it achieved full sentience. No longer a mere book, it is a homicidal, psychopathic, starved, and power-hungry being. Like the rest of the imperfect Unseelie, it wants to finish or perfect itself, to attain that which it perceives it lacks. In this case, the perfect host body. When the king realized the Book had become sentient, he created a prison for it, and made the sidhe-seers-some say by tampering with their bloodline, lending a bit of his own-to guard it and keep it from ever escaping. The king realized that rather than eradicating the dangerous magic, he"d only managed to create a copy of it. Much like the king, the Sinsar Dubh found a way to create a copy of itself, and planted it inside an unborn fetus, MacKayla Lane. There are currently two Sinsar Dubhs: one that Cruce absorbed (or became possessed by) and the copy inside MacKayla Lane that she refuses to open. As long as she never voluntarily seeks or takes a single spell from it, it can"t take her over and she won"t be possessed. If, however, she uses it for any reason, she will be obliterated by the psychopathic villain trapped inside it, forever silenced. With the long-starved and imprisoned Sinsar Dubh free, life for humans will become h.e.l.l on Earth. Unfortunately, the Book is highly charismatic, brilliant, and seductive and has observed humanity long enough to exploit human weaknesses like a maestro.
SONG OF MAKING: The greatest power in the universe, this song can create life from nothing. All life stems from it. Originally known by the first Seelie Queen, she rarely used it because, as with all great magic, it demands great price. It was to be pa.s.sed from queen to queen, to be used only when absolutely necessary to protect and sustain life. To hear this song is to experience Heaven on Earth, to know the how, when, and why of our existence, and simultaneously have no need to know it at all. The melody is allegedly so beautiful, transformative, and pure that if one who harbors evil in his heart hears it, he will be charred to ash where he stands.
UNSEELIE FLESH: Eating Unseelie flesh endows an average human with enormous strength, power, and sensory acuity; heightens s.e.xual pleasure and stamina; and is highly addictive. It also lifts the veil between worlds and permits a human to see past the glamour worn by the Fae, to see their actual forms. Before the walls fell, all Fae concealed themselves with glamour. After the walls fell, they didn"t care, but now Fae are beginning to conceal themselves again, as humans have learned that the common element iron is useful in injuring and imprisoning them.
VOICE: A Druid art or skill that compels the person it"s being used on to precisely obey the letter of whatever command is issued. Dageus, Drustan, and Cian MacKeltar are fluent in it. Jericho Barrons taught Darroc (for a price) and also trained MacKayla Lane to use and withstand it. Teacher and apprentice become immune to each other and can no longer be compelled.
WARD: A powerful magic known to druids, sorcerers, sidhe-seers, and Fae. There are many categories, including but not limited to Earth, Air, Fire, Stone, and Metal wards. Barrons is adept at placing wards, more so than any of the Nine besides Daku.
WECARE: An organization founded after the walls between man and Fae fell, using food, supplies, and safety as a lure to draw followers. Rainey Lane works with them, sees only the good in the organization, possibly because it"s the only place she can harness resources to rebuild Dublin and run her Green-Up group. Someone in WeCare authors the Dublin Daily, a local newspaper to compete with the Dani Daily; whoever does it dislikes Dani a great deal and is always ragging on her. Not much is known about this group yet. They lost some of their power when three major players began raiding them and stockpiling supplies.
In memory of Moonshadow, best cat who ever lived.
Rest in peace, baby.
You never know what people are made of until you see them under fire.
This one"s for you, Dad-inspiration, warrior, hero.
BY KAREN MARIE MONING.
THE FEVER SERIES.
Darkfever.
Bloodfever Faefever.
Dreamfever Shadowfever Iced.
Burned GRAPHIC NOVEL.
Fever Moon.
NOVELLA.
Into the Dreaming THE HIGHLANDER SERIES..
Beyond the Highland Mist To Tame a Highland Warrior.
The Highlander"s Touch.
Kiss of the Highlander The Dark Highlander.
The Immortal Highlander.
Spell of the Highlander.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR.