ALAN GRATZ is the author of Samurai Shortstop, an ALA 2007 Top Ten Book for Young Adults. He began writing The League of Seven by listing all the things that ten-year-old Alan would have thought were awesome, including brass goggles, airships, tentacled monsters, brains in jars, windup robots, secret societies, and super powers. (In fact, he still thinks all those things are awesome.) He lives in North Carolina with his wife and daughter.