Brett McBean was born and raised in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. A child of the ’80s, he grew up on a steady diet of He-Man cartoons, Steven Spielberg movies and audio tapes such as Summer Hits ’88. And yet, somehow he managed to turn out normal (well, kinda…). He started playing the drums at age ten and after high school, studied music at Box Hill College, one of Victoria’s most renowned music schools, where he earned an Advanced Diploma. Shortly after completing the music degree, he turned his attention towards writing, and he now prefers to pound the keyboard rather than the drums.His books, which include The Mother, The Last Motel, The Awakening and the Wolf Creek prequel novel, Desolation Game (co-written with director/screenwriter Greg McLean), have been published in Australia, the US, and Germany, and he’s been nominated for the Aurealis, Ditmar, and Ned Kelly awards. He won the 2011 Australian Shadows Award for his collection, Tales of Sin and Madness. He has a keen interest in true crime, in particular the infamous Jack the Ripper murders of 1888, and most of his fiction deals with true-life horrors, often using real-life crimes as a basis for his stories. He still lives in the wilds of Melbourne with his wife, daughter and German shepherd.