Steve Hillard grew up in Bossier City, Louisiana and Grand Junction, Colorado. He graduated from Colorado State University and later earned a degree in philosophy at Columbia University and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Colorado. Before settling into his current career as a private equity entrepreneur, Hillard was a teacher at Rikers Island Prison, a welder, a carpenter, and a practicing lawyer. He is the founder and head of Council Tree Communications, a private equity fund involved in the entertainment and telecom industries. He resides with his wife, Sharmaine, in San Antonio. Publication of his first book, "Mirkwood: A Novel About JRR Tolkien", led to an exciting adventure. The Tolkien Estate sought to ban the book, to which the author responded with a lawsuit in federal court. The dispute received international attention, with articles in the London Guardian, The Hollywood Reporter, and The Christian Science Monitor. After the dispute went viral, the case settled and the book went on to become an Amazon Fantasy Best Seller, recipient of a national IPPY Award, and was published world-wide in Spanish by an imprint of Planeta. The book has since been picked up by a Hollywood producer and is listed in IMDB as a movie in development. An epic spin-out of the book's main fantasy character, Ara, is the subject of an eight-volume series co-authored with Joel Eisenberg. The first volume, "Creation: The Chronicles of Ara", will be released by Zharmae Publishing in November, 2014. A companion series, "The Lost Chronicles of Ara", is written by the same duo and is slated for release starting in 2015. These series are the subject of an agreement with a major independent producer to create a TV series. Mr. Hillard's other writing projects include a forthcoming thriller about JFK and a "retro-fifties horror" graphic novel about a lost Cold War project in a remote canyon in the Western United States.