Chris Wooding was born February 28th, 1977. His formative years were spent in a grim, squalid ex-mining town in the Midlands, where the crushing monotony of his surroundings fostered a need for escapism that he found in books. Possessed of a frighteningly sharp focus as a child, he had already determined that he wanted to be an author by the time he hit adolescence; and he had barely reached adulthood by the time he had achieved his ambition. He had a literary agent at eighteen; Crashing was accepted for publication when he was nineteen years old and released soon after.

Since it was scarcely possible to stop him writing anyway, the prospect of making a living by doing what he loved - instead of being forced to work at something he didn’t -sparked a fire under him. He spent the next few years writing feverishly around his English Literature studies at the University of Sheffield, producing a multitude of works across a range of styles, from teenage stories to horror to offbeat fantasy and grim political drama. Every one was published. By the time he left University, he was earning just about enough to get by, so he took up writing full-time at twenty-one.

University had broadened his horizons from the somewhat sheltered existence in the post-industrial doomscape of his home town, and he began to travel. He spent months in the USA to see if it matched up to the world represented in the movies he had grown up with, after which he travelled to the Far East where he got lost in a Malaysian jungle, and later backpacked around Europe where he almost managed to starve on a train between Athens and Budapest. After that he went to Japan where he was only saved from a hobo-esque existence trapped in the impenetrable Tokyo subway system by a kind passer-by, and to South Africa where he witnessed one of his best friends being mauled by a cheetah but was too paralysed with laughter to intervene. Then he went to Scandinavia, where nothing life-threatening happened to him, which was nice. At the moment he’s living in Madrid trying to be all Hemingway and stuff.

Now thirty, he has published twenty books and several short stories. The Haunting Of Alaizabel Cray won him the Silver Smarties Award. His works have sold all over the world and been translated into many different languages, including Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Thai, Indonesian and Icelandic. He has also works as a screenwriter, and has several works in development.

He learned not so long ago that his family tree can be traced back to John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, which has no bearing on him whatsoever but it’s kind of interesting anyway.