C. D. Payne is the creator of the cult favorite "Nick Twisp" novels for teens, Youth in Revolt and Revolting Youth. Payne's reckless but brilliant teen hero moves from one fictional crisis to another, but always triumphs over his numerous adversaries in the end. The first book was self-published, and soon developed an enthusiastic following among teen and adult readers alike. Though Payne's success as an author came at a price--the $50,000 he spent to publish Youth in Revolt himself--readers' response to his fiction gave him the impetus to write several more works.

Payne was born in Akron, Ohio in 1949. Akron is considered the home to the American tire industry, but it was a place Payne described as "a pleasant city with many large factories, rigorous winters, and an all-pervasive cloud cover from its proximity to Lake Erie," in a compilation interview published on the Nick Twisp Web site...