What you'll find in the back of the books—assuming you made it that far:
Trenton A. V. Richler is a pseudonym, because the man's real name doesn't fit the cover nearly as well. He built this world with a keyboard, an overactive imagination, and a bourbon that was supposed to be just the one.
A refugee from the technology industry—a fact that will either explain everything or nothing, depending on how you've read the books—he eventually decided to weaponize his dad jokes in novel form. Literally. His family continues to reserve judgment.
The technology industry also deserves partial credit for the bourbon.
Now a resident of his fifth U.S. state, he and his wife have leaned fully into being Yankees. Not the polite kind who are just passing through, mind you—they stayed. This achievement has earned them the region's highest honor: damn Yankees, bestowed by the locals with all the warmth of disdain.
He is not Rand. He is not Rand's father. He is, however, extremely fond of bourbon, good friends, far-flung travel, akuri, and the quiet dignity of eating peanut butter directly from the jar. Heroism is a work in progress.
For those who require more data before rendering a verdict:
He was born and raised in Michigan—and yes, he still holds up his right hand to show you where. It's a reflex at this point, and he has made peace with that. From there he sampled Illinois, Georgia, and Maryland before arriving in Texas, where the locals assessed the situation and issued their verdict accordingly.
The bourbon is a recent development, and honestly, hard-won. There were beer years. Then a long wine era—long enough that he made his own, which is either a hobby or a warning sign, and possibly both. Whiskey came later, as wisdom often does, though he remains loyal to a cold beer or a good glass of wine when the occasion calls for it. The technology industry did not create the bourbon habit so much as accelerate the timeline.
He spent his career in technology, working in home control and cybersecurity. He found the former genuinely delightful and the latter genuinely necessary, and like most people who have worked in both, he has opinions about which one the world undervalues.
He has been reading for most of his life, across genres and in volume—science fiction, fantasy, thriller, travel, horror, whatever is good and whoever wrote it. His shelves include Terry Maggert, James Lovegrove, Lee Child, James S. A. Corey, Mark Dawson, Mark Greaney, Randolph Lalonde, and an embarrassing number of others. The science fiction authors on that list he has been arguing with internally for nearly as long as he has been reading them. For decades, the commentary ran on a private loop—that's not how that works, I'd have gone somewhere else entirely, nobody asked me but—until a window of spare time finally opened up and he ran out of reasons not to sit down and find out if he was right. The books are the result. He remains cautiously optimistic, which is also how he approaches the holiday light displays he choreographs to music every year, the four fast and impractical cars he has owned purely for the joy of it, and life in general.
Heroism, as noted, remains a work in progress.