Richard Bard
Richard Bard lived quite the life before becoming the author of the popular Brainrush series of books. As a young man he worked as a pilot for the Air Force until he was diagnosed with cancer and given only a few months to live. Thankfully, he was a survivor of that and went on to graduate the University of Notre Dame with a management degree. He then used that degree to run companies who created high security products for the US government.