Matthew Peterson is an award-winning short story writer, second degree black belt in karate, Eagle scout, computer programmer, and former missionary. He also has uncanny luck with firsts, from getting accepted to the first and only university he applied to (Brigham Young University), becoming the Director of Information Technologies from his first and only job interview after graduating with a business management degree, and even marrying the first woman he dated in college. He wanted twins, and, miraculously, his first two children were red-headed twins. He won first place in the first writing contest he entered, and the first publisher he sent his book to bought the rights to publish it. He hopes his luck with firsts will continue on with his debut novel, Paraworld Zero.

– Wrote Paraworld Zero, a science fantasy novel which was published January 2008
- Paraworld Zero hit the BarnesAndNoble.com bestseller list, hit the Amazon.com category bestseller list, received honorable mentions in the New York Book Festival, Beach Book Festival, and Hollywood Book Festival, became a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and Moonbeam Children's Book Awards, and received the Flamingnet TOP CHOICE Award
– Won first place in the WritersWeekly.com Fall 2004 contest against 500 entries
– Two-times quarter-finalist in the Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest
– Two honorable mentions in the 2007 Writers Digest contest, which had 19,000 entries
– Placed in the Science Fiction Writers of Earth, Ralan's Spectravaganza, and SpecFicWorld short story contests