David F. Farris was that kid who spent all of his birthday money on Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon cards. They started his love of storytelling. He’d create his own Pokemon, draw them, give them a biography, physical measurements, attacks, etc. As he grew older—into a bigger kid—he began to draw cartoons through the same process, except in more detail this time. He even drew a block-by-block detailed map of an imaginary city across eight sheets of graph paper. He’d dabble in writing short stories because of his love of Harry Potter, but his specialty was drawing.

Creative writing didn’t become a strong passion until 12th grade, when he wrote a mock epic; The Pokemon Master … Surprise, surprise. But still, he elected to attend Emory University in hopes of bettering his future with something more practical: Organic Chemistry. It took no more than three years for David to realize his mistake and bail.

He became lost after that, as he submerged himself into the depths of competitive gaming. This included double-digit hours of sitting on a chair entirely too close to a monitor with a bottle of Mountain Dew and a box of Nerds by his side at all times. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was working in retail.

Thankfully, he met a friend while gaming. And this friend introduced him to anime. And anime reintroduced him to his passion to build worlds and tell stories. The likes of One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, and Fairy Tail and their massive worlds inspired him to create something just as big. And when he read The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss, it solidified his desire.