The Lost Chronicles of Ara: The Mirkwood Codex - Softcover

Stephen Hillard grew up in Bossier City, Louisiana, and Grand Junction, Colorado. He graduated from Colorado State University, and also 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, Steve was a teacher at Rikers Island Prison, a welder, a carpenter, and a practicing litigation attorney. He is the founder of Council Tree Investors, a private equity fund involved in the entertainment and telecom industries. Steve has also been an active philanthropist, focusing primarily on higher education, as well as at-risk Latino and indigenous youth, at the Escuela Tlatelolco in Denver, Colorado. In 2011, Steve published Mirkwood: A Novel About JRR Tolkien, which sparked international controversy, became an Amazon Best Seller, received a national prize, and was subsequently published worldwide in Spanish by Grupo Planeta. In addition to collaborative efforts with his partner, Joel Eisenberg, on The Chronicles of Ara, Steve is developing other projects. These include an untitled prequel to Mirkwood, Farway Canyon, a retro-horror graphic novel about radiation, blobs, and (of course) Cold War zombies, and KNOLL, a novel about JFK, Carlos Marcello, Elvis, the NSA, and Edward Snowden. He resides with his wife, Sharmaine, in Colorado.

Joel Eisenberg has been interested in the mechanics behind artistic creation, an ongoing theme of the Chronicles of Ara series, since he penned the nonfiction How to Survive a Day Job in 2004. Interviewing seventy-plus professional creatives, including celebrities from several artistic industries, he credits his "mentor in a box" tome with hastening the realization of his dad's inspiring words from forty years ago. Writing a novel with similar objectives, much less a series, has been on his bucket list since. Professionally, Joel has worked primarily in the movie and television industries as a writer and producer. The film he is most proud of, April Showers, which he executive produced, was based on the Columbine school shooting tragedy. He is a former special education teacher and supports school safety causes. Joel lives with the only woman in the world who could put up with him, his wife, Lorie, and their rescue dog (repeating a not-so-subtle message there), Koko, in Los Angeles, California.