Terry Deary was born in Sunderland, in the north east of England, and now lives in County Durham. He was a professional actor before he began writing scripts for the theatre company he was working for and then adapting those stories into novels. He has also worked as a theatre director, museum manager, drama teacher and television presenter.

Terry is the creator of the Horrible Histories series and has written both fiction and non-fiction for children and adults, including the No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller A History of Britain in Ten Enemies. He has been a published writer since 1977, selling over 38 million books in 45 languages, and he has also written for TV, theatre, radio, audio and new media scripts.

Terry's great love has always been reading murder mysteries and, for his landmark 350th book, he decided to finally write his own. Actually, I'm a Murderer was his first crime novel and it was the start of the Actually Murders series.