Michael's love affair with travelling began when he and a friend breathed new life into an old Honda Prelude and clocked up 10,000km in the Australian outback. It was their ticket to personal freedom as they delved deep into a life of unplanned, unfiltered and socially-engaging experiences.

Their desire to disregard the rule book led them to rural parts of Australia, Asia, Europe and Africa, as they embraced a hand-to-mouth existence through unconventional work and real relationships with their global neighbours.

Michael's obsession with writing and all things literary soon took on a new shape, as he began writing short stories about his experiences and sharing them with the wider community.

You could say these are the roots of Sun Rider Press.

Zack is a multimedia wizard by day, a cocktail shaker by night, and an all-round adventure traveller whenever he gets a spare second. His digital consultancy business, Hoodoo, tackles everything from design, promotion and events. It's even responsible for the beautiful website that you are on right now.

Zack Reed is responsible for all the behind-the-scenes operations that go into running a small business, and Sunrider would definitely be nothing without his digital wizardry.  

The origins of Luke's obsession with art and travel can be traced back his birth on a sailing boat in the Virgin Islands. As a child, growing up in New Zealand, he and his brother spent countless hours absorbed in comics, video games and literature.

Luke took the blind plunge to Bristol, UK, when he was only 19. He met Mike not long after, in the basement of an old printing factory-turned-hostel. It was there that they began working together, sharing their artistic styles and channeling the attitudes of many of their idols - Jack Kerouac, Dylan Thomas, Hunter S. Thompson, Bukowski, Krumm, among others. Their bromance quickly formed.

Luke's own journey took him back to NZ, where he underwent a rigorous 2-year tattooing apprenticeship that would soon put him back in the northern hemisphere - 15 minutes from the Colosseum, to be exact, finding his artistic roots in Rome, with a cig and bottle of Italia's finest in hand.  

Joe lives and breathes everything that the literary form has to offer. By day he heads up Publishing Platforms at Packt, and by night he's either scribbling his own poetry, head-down in something by William Gibson, or spinning dub-funk grooves at his local boozer, The Elmers Arms.

Joe also makes eBooks for a living, and had a very prominent hand in getting Sunrider started making books. Joe wields InDesign skills like they're second nature, loves orphans and widows like they're part of his family, and can work his way around literary code to craft beautiful, responsive and user-friendly eBooks.

It's safe to say that we would be nowhere without Joe Runnacles.