About the author
Josh Melzer
Revel and the Lava Crusher began the way the best bedtime stories do, on demand. Josh Melzer's son Revel wanted a story about himself, a monster truck, and a fireball, and from there he kept adding to the cast, a fearless cannonball named Boom, a gadget-obsessed squirrel named Nutty. Halloween turned a pack of skeletons into a villain called the Skeleton King. The Floor is Lava, his favorite game, gave the truck its name. Josh started writing the stories down so he would not have to reinvent them every night. They kept growing.
He wrote them fast and cinematic on purpose, so a young kid could picture every race as it happened. The result is a middle grade fantasy adventure that works read aloud together, or handed to a slightly older kid to tear through alone.
Josh was born in New Jersey and spent years in New York working in marketing, building brands and telling their stories, before moving to Florida. He still builds Lego sets, which makes sense for someone who cannot stop building worlds. He lives in Boca Raton with his husband and a French bulldog.
Revel and his twin sister Rylie, now five, are the book's heroes and its namesakes, and they are still too young to read it. For now, Revel just calls it his monster truck book.
The world of Gearford kept expanding long after the kids fell asleep.
