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Born in Portland, Oregon in 1964, Jack Lewis is a middle-aged curmudgeon of catholic writing proclivity. Jack holds a BA English cum laude from Washington State University and an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California. He wears thick glasses, drinks Ardbeg, owns two motorcycles and a chainsaw, and prefers slip-on shoes.

In 2006, Jack contributed two chapters to Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Home Front (ed. Andrew Carroll, Random House 2006), and participated in two documentary films based on that book including Richard Robbins's Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience. Those writings stemmed from his service leading a tactical psychological operations team in NW Iraq during 2004-2005.

Editorial writing earlier in Jack's career resulted in the D.B. Houston Journalism Prize, SPJ Editorial Writing honors, Best of the Palouse citation, and WSU Philosophy Club Gadfly of the Year.

Between spasms of frenzied writing activity, Jack has worked as a busboy, geriatric nursing aide, soldier, production assistant, telecommunications circuit designer, soda jerk, computer technician, hotel manager, farm hand, editor, floor clerk for the coolest hardware store in Seattle, and motorcycle service writer.

To get a bit of Jack between rounds of books and magazine contributions, you can sample his blog at www.jaxworx.com.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Montgomery J. Granger is a three-time mobilized U.S. Army

Reserve Major (Ret.), who was called into his Reserve Center in

Uniondale (Long Island), New York, on 9/11, in response to the

attacks on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and

Flight 93, which crashed at Shanksville, Pennsylvania. He answered

his country’s call to duty next in January 2002 for a mission to help

run the military detention facility at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo

Bay, Cuba. He was called up again just six months after

returning from duty at Gitmo, but this time remained stateside at the

U.S. Army Reserve Training Center at Fort Dix, New Jersey. After

nearly six months at Fort Dix, MAJ Granger returned to civilian life

for about a year when he was involuntarily transferred to another

Reserve Army unit that was deploying to Iraq in the fall of 2004.

Major Granger served 14 months of active duty on his third deployment

and served in Baghdad, Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca, and Ashraf,

Iraq, as Medical Service officer for military detention facility operations.

He is married and is the father of five children, and lives on

Long Island, New York. He is also the author of “Theodore,” a personal

narrative published in the 2006 Random House wartime anthology

“Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Home Front

in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families,” where he wrote

about his fear and anxiety over having left his family in 2002, and

especially two-day-old Theodore, and what reaction there was upon

his return. Operation Homecoming was sponsored in part by the

National Endowment for the Arts, and edited by Andrew Carroll, editor

of the New York Times bestselling book, War Letters.

Granger was born in Illinois, raised and schooled in Rubidoux,

California, and attended undergraduate school at the University of

Alabama in Tuscaloosa where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree

in education. He earned a master’s degree in curriculum and teaching

from Teachers College—Columbia University, where he met his wife.

He also attended the State University of New York at Stony Brook,

where he earned professional credits to obtain a New York State

School District Administrators’ license. He is an accomplished coach

and teacher of health and physical education, having taught in Alabama,

California, New York City, and Long Island, before becoming a

director of Health, Physical Education and Athletics. He was most

recently Director of Health, Physical Education and Athletics, and

then District Administrator for Operations for the Comsewogue

school district in Port Jefferson Station, N.Y., and is now a Director of

Health, Physical Education and Athletics, and Director of Facilities

for and east end school district in Long Island.

Granger is the author of many writings and musing as yet unpublished,

but hopefully soon to be shared with a waiting world.

NBC's on-air Security Analyst for their official coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Robert Schaefer is a U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret), Foreign Area Officer, senior analyst, and diplomat specializing in the Eurasia region. For over twenty seven years he has served in a variety of special units and participated in virtually every U.S. overseas operation since 1990. He has extensive experience with counterinsurgency and counter-terrorist operations around the world and has lived and worked in many countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia as a diplomat and adviser to foreign governments and militaries. He is uniquely qualified to analyze the conflict in the North Caucasus because of his first-hand experience planning and executing counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism operations in the Caucasus region.

Lieutenant Colonel (ret) Schaefer is the recipient of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and the Office of Strategic Services Society's Award of Excellence (The Singlaub Award) as the U.S. Special Operations Command Person of the Year for his historic achievements with Russian airborne forces. He obtained his M.A. from Harvard University's Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia program, and is the host of National Public Radio's Memorial Day Special 2007 - 2013.

He is a member of the Editorial Board for the Caucasus Survey (a peer-reviewed professional journal), as well as a consultant to several government agencies, universities, and a frequent contributor to major media outlets (CNN, NPR, BBC, VOA, and others) and seminars focusing on Russia, Chechnya, Dagestan, and the North Caucasus insurgency. His critically-acclaimed book "The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus" won multiple national awards and was named to Kirkus Reviews "Best of 2011," and the "Top 150 Books on Terrorism and Counterterrorism" (the only book about the conflict to make the list). He has also contributed a chapter to an anthology entitled, "The Fire Below, How the Caucasus Changed Russia," (Bloomsbury, 2013), and was a contributor to "Operation Homecoming" (Random House, 2006).