A.S. Akkalon didn’t plan to become a fantasy author. She planned to run away and join the circus, so she spent her time climbing trees and doing somersaults.
One day she came down from the trees for long enough to read a book, and discovered the fantastical worlds of David Eddings, Katharine Kerr, and Raymond E. Feist.
A new plan crystallised: learn magic, live in a castle, and fight dragons. She practiced martial arts and horse riding, and even tried her hand at fencing, which, to her great disappointment, had far too many rules and would have been entirely ineffectual for dragon-slaying.
She travelled the world (or at least two continents of it) and gained many other skills that would have been helpful for dragon-slaying, such as statistical analysis, intimate knowledge of the semi-colon, and the ability to drink coffee while walking.
Unfortunately, she graduated in an age when the dragon-slaying industry was in decline, so she put her horse to pasture and took a job in an office where computers outnumbered suits of armour more than two to one.
Today she lives in beautiful Middle Earth in a house with a cosy log fire, her husband, and three cats who have all the answers but aren’t sharing any of them. She works in the office long enough to keep the wifi on, writes high fantasy, and blogs about a few things that make sense and a lot of things that don’t.
Her stories might have dragons and castles, ravaging nomadic hordes, or oases, camels, and giant scorpion demons, but they all have heroes who are flawed and spectacular, who embark on sweeping emotional journeys and occasionally get stabbed, and who in the end get exactly what they deserve.
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