Dan lives a few blocks from his childhood home and works as a Software Engineer for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is married with one son. In addition to writing and illustration, he loves the outdoors and staying active. He and his son mountain bike together in the summer and ski in the winter.

Writing

Dan has loved fantasy from the first day his dad read to him from The Hobbit as a young child. He grew up on Tolkien and made his first attempts at writing fantasy when he was fifteen. He finished his first novel (which is thankfully forever lost) while studying at BYU.

Dan let that novel die a silent death, but no writing is wasted. He learned and got to work on his next project while still at BYU. Years of revisions and beta read cycles ensued. A beta reader said she saw many similarities between Dan’s writing and a relatively unknown, newly published author named Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson quickly became Dan’s favorite author to read and envy… in a friendly sort of way.

Dan treated Brandon to dinner after a Hero of Ages book-signing to talk about writing, publishing, and strategies. Brandon gave great advice not to invest all his time into a trilogy if he wanted to traditionally publish. Dan had what he believed was a finished book one in his series Elenya’s Saga. However, by Brandon’s advice, he pivoted and wrote a standalone novel, Lifeweaver.

Later, Dan wanted to continue Elenya’s Saga and wrote the second book in the trilogy. He had both books self-published on Amazon for some time before finding the time and ambition to complete the trilogy. Rereading book one left Dan disheartened. Rough writing and narrative mistakes plagued the book.

Thus, Dan set about on a complete rebuild and rewrite of the saga he’d first attempted twenty years ago. In the retelling, Dan reimagined magic systems and cultures. He focused on giving characters time and space in the narrative. In doing so, Dan wrote chapters for a single character until he reached a thematic resolution. He then pivoted to another character, intending to interweave chapters between character arcs once he had them all written. However, he really came to love the new format: nine shorter novels (or longer novellas) that all serve to tell a large sweeping tale.