About the author

     John Flanagan, the author of The Ranger's Apprentice started writing a series of weekly short stories to encourage his son Michael to read. Will, the main character was actually based off of his son. He has a lot of the same qualities as his son, and does the sort of things that his son likes to do: climbing, archery, throwing knives at trees. He doesn't try to pretend to be Halt, Will's apprentice master, but a lot of the conversations that go on between Halt and Will are based on exchanges between him and Mike when he was a teenager. He even incorporated some of the short stories that he wrote into the first book of the series. He now has written a total of 12 books in The Ranger's Apprentice series.