Derrick Ward

To bring my friends together during the pandemic, I got really into being a Dungeon Master. I looked up youtube videos, spent a disproportionate amount of time catering to my players, building a world in which they’d fall in love with. One in which they could escape from their woes and worries and engage in a fantasy, if for a little while.

But then my creativity took me further. I wanted to tell a story. I wanted to create a story that mattered to my players, but we could never do it at the pace I wanted.

Then I saw a meme “What if I wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons by myself, what if I wanted to create stories and play through them by myself?” The response was “That’s called writing a book.” I imagined a Key and Peele sketch, about robbing a bank. “That’s called getting a job.”

Erynn Lehtonen

One day, Erynn’s army of fluffy minions will take over the world. But, well, she hasn’t had any luck animating stuffed animals yet! Ever since graduating with her degree in creative writing from the University of British Columbia, you can usually find her typing away at her next fantasy novel like her life depends on it. Other times, she’s locked inside a book, be that reading about dragons, mythology, folklore, or daydreaming in another fantasy world. She also entertains a “mild” tea obsession and guards her hoard like any bookdragon would. It’s her goal to introduce readers to the complexities of mental illness through the perspectives of lifelike characters in fantasy worlds.