Zoe Sugg, aka Zoella, is a vlogger from Brighton, UK. Her beauty, fashion and lifestyle vlogs have gained her millions of YouTube subscribers, with even more viewing the vlogs every month. She won the 2011 Cosmopolitan Blog Award for Best Established Beauty Blog and went on to win the Best Beauty Vlogger award the following year. Zoe has also twice received the Best British Vlogger award at the 2013 and 2014 Radio 1 Teen Awards and the 2014 and 2015 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice award for UK's Favourite Vlogger, and she was named Web Star for Fashion and Beauty at the 2014 Teen Choice Awards.

Amy McCulloch is a Canadian living in London, who fits writing around work as an Editorial Director at one of the UK’s leading children’s publishers. She was bitten by the travel bug at an early age while accompanying her parents on buying trips around the world for their oriental carpet business.

It was her love of travel that inspired her to set a novel in a hot, desert location (moving to freezing Ottawa, Canada, where her first winter hit -40 degrees C, might have had something to do with that, too). She studied Medieval and Old English literature at the University of Toronto. The sequel to The Oathbreaker’s Shadow, The Shadow’s Curse, is available now.