Scott Lynch was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1978, the first of three brothers. Early in life he worked as a dishwasher, a waiter, a graphic designer, an office manager, a cook, and a game supplement self-publisher before accidentally selling his first novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora, in 2004. From 2005 to 2016 Scott also served as a paid-on-call firefighter in Wisconsin. Scott currently lives in Massachusetts with his wife, award-winning SF/F novelist Elizabeth Bear, plus four cats (Duncan, Gurney, Molly, and Fafhrd) and a pair of Icelandic horses (a gelding named Ormr and a mare named Spola).