John Ringo is the New York Times best-selling author of the Black Tide Rising series, the Posleen War series, the Through the Looking Glass series, and more, including the Troy Rising series, of which Live Free or Die is the first installment. A veteran of the 82nd Airborne, Ringo brings firsthand knowledge of military operations to his fiction.

Gary Poole has worked in the entertainment and publishing industries for his entire adult life. He's worked directly with John Ringo on more than a dozen novels and has adapted several of them into screenplays (all of which remain in development). When not working with Ringo, Poole is the managing editor of a successful alternative newsweekly in Tennessee. He spent years on the radio as a talk show host and is an award-winning broadcast journalist.