Award-winning author Garth Nix is a developing power in the world of fantasy. A native of Australia, Nix was born in Melbourne in 1963 and eventually settled in Sydney. He put his bachelor's degree in professional writing from the University of Canberra to good use, working as a sales representative, publicist, and senior editor in the publishing field. In addition, Nix worked in a bookstore, served four years in the Australian Army Reserve, and established a marketing agency.

In 1997, Nix met his future wife, Anna, just as he left his day job to focus solely on his writing. They met again at a dinner where Nix was a featured speaker. In April 2000, the couple married at Bawley Point, a town on the coast of New South Wales.

Nix's background in the Australian Army Reserve adds a dose of realism to the fighting scenes in The Fall. His hobbies include fishing, bodysurfing, collecting books, reading, films, and writing. His knowledge of fishing is apparent in the careful development of the Icecarl society for The Seventh Tower series.

Nix says his ideas are drawn from an image or thought that slowly grows into something that he feels a need to express. The Seventh Tower series differs slightly in that Nix, who was chosen because an editor at Scholastic enjoyed his work, received a vague description of the proposed books from the creative staff at Scholastic, publishers of Harry Potter and Animorphs, and LucasFilm, George Lucas's movie studio which produced the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films.

In an interview with Writer's Write, Nix says he received a list that "included points like 'a castle where everything outside is dark,' 'a closed society similar to feudal Japan,' or 'the architecture of Gaudi.'" He took the list and created his own outline for the six books with his own ideas for the setting and background of this new world. Once his basic ideas were approved, he wrote one book every couple months until he completed the series.

He likens the experience to the works of Charles Dickens—and, in recent years, Stephen King—authors who have written "serial novels," or novels in which each part is published as soon as it is written instead of waiting to be combined into one complete book. He writes his first draft in longhand in small notebooks that are easy to carry. When he types his second draft on the computer, he makes revisions as he goes.