A Shield Against the Darkness

Todd Downing's love affair with genre fiction dates back to his consumption of classic radio dramas and comic books as a child in the 1970s, which broadened into a general appreciation for scifi and fantasy media of all kinds.He grew up in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, writing and drawing from a young age, his works ever-present in school literary journals and newspapers, and eventually on film. He married his high school sweetheart and moved to Seattle in 1991 where he began to write professionally, and worked as an artist in the videogame industry until his publishing company became a full time operation, while raising two children amid the chaos. As the co-founder and creative director of Deep7 Press, Downing is the primary author and designer of over fifty roleplaying titles, including Arrowflight, Grimmworld, Airship Daedalus, and the official Red Dwarf RPG. He continues to write genre fiction for stage, film, comics, audio, and adventure gaming products.Widowed to cancer in 2005, Downing remarried in 2009 and currently lives in a three-generation home in Port Orchard, Washington, with his wife, her mother, their daughter, four cats, and a flock of unruly chickens. Thankfully, he has an office with a door that closes. www.todddowning.com