Andrew Smith is the award-winning author of several Young Adult novels, including the critically acclaimed Grasshopper Jungle. He is a native-born Californian who spent most of his formative years traveling the world. His university studies focused on Political Science, Journalism, and Literature. He has published numerous short stories and articles. The Alex Crow, a starred novel is his ninth novel. He lives in Southern California.

Dr Andrew T. Ross was a former operations research analyst with the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) of the Australian Government Department of Defence. He is also a political scientist and military historian, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Canberra.

He was the author of many studies published by DSTO, and since that time (with Dr Robert Hall) has completed numerous other studies written under contract for DSTO and UNSW. Much of the latter involved Ross in building complex computerised databases for his analysis of insurgency warfare campaigns involving Australia.

Ross was the major contributor to the 2015 Cambridge University Press publication The search for tactical success in Vietnam: An analysis of Australian Task Force Combat Operations (other authors were Robert Hall and Amy Griffin).