A. Samuel Bales is the author of the epic fantasy novel Dreamer’s Folly, Book One of the Wayward Light Saga.Adam (yes, that’s what the mysterious ‘A’ stands for) was born in Spokane, Washington to a homicide detective father and doting non-profit admin mother. He is told he did mostly ordinary baby things there before spending his formative years in Federal Way, a smallish town near Seattle, Washington.It was there that one fateful day at the age of eight he bought his first Magic: The Gathering cards at a garage sale and entered the world of gaming, fantasy, and geekiness. Magic led to a still more fateful day— the day he walked into the computer room of his local game store and was introduced to the game EverQuest. Truth be told, it was in EverQuest that he spent his formative years, having (now-embarrassingly) spent the majority of his waking adolescent hours playing it. While this game store has since become an adult toy shop and its computer room an even adultier lair within (he is told), the epic world he experienced in EverQuest would live on in his memory and set the foundation for his interest in writing fantasy.While completing his degree in Computer Science at Washington State University, he began what would later become Dreamer’s Folly and the Wayward Light Saga. It was also in college that he started a nine year stint in the National Guard, filling no few field notepads with story musings before calling his mercenary years quits. Since having children, and probably before, he has been pretty much a square, wearing boat shoes every day despite not owning a boat.A. Samuel Bales now resides in Portland, Oregon with his wife and two young children who remind him each day how great life can be, and also remind him that they’re tired of bedtime stories about Jeld. He loves deeply, dances poorly, and writes.Books that inspired me:- Bruce Coville, Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher. My first (kids) fantasy book.- David Eddings, The Belgariad. My first epic fantasy saga- Patrick Rothfuss, Name of the Wind. A masterful lesson on letting a world come to life through its characters rather than the classic fantasy detail dumps.- Robin Hobb, Assassin's Appreciate. A master. The world, the magic system, the plotting. Most incredibly, the characters. - George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones. Only he and reality can craft characters so complex, so gray.Read more about this authorRead less about this author