Larry Daily was born in Covington, Kentucky and currently resides in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. He holds a Ph.D. in Psychology and teaches psychology classes at Shepherd University. The Minstrel and the Prophet is his first work of fiction and is the result of a decades long love of fantasy inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin, Patricia McKillip, and Mary Stewart. In his spare time Larry builds HO scale model trains, plays folk music on six- and twelve-string guitars, and devours fantasy novels.