Shane Jiraiya Cummings has been acknowledged as "one of Australia's leading voices in dark fantasy". He is the author of bestselling titles such as The Smoke Dragon and the Apocrypha Sequence (Deviance, Divinity, Inferno, and Insanity) and editor of the acclaimed anthology Rage Against the Night. Shane has had more than one hundred short stories published in Australia, North America, Europe, and Asia, and his work has been translated into Japanese, French, Spanish, and Polish.He has won two Ditmar Awards, and he has been nominated for more than twenty other major awards including Spain's Premios Ignotus. Shane is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association and former Vice President of the Australian Horror Writers Association. When he is not writing, Shane is an editor and journalist by day and a sword fighting instructor by night. In his youth, Shane was trained in the deadly arts of the ninja, and the name Jiraiya (lit. "Young Thunder", after the legendary ninja Jiraiya) was bestowed upon him by his sensei.Shane currently lives in New Zealand, and his home on the web is www.jiraiya.com.au