Bio
Dave Reed is an award-winning dark (like REALLY dark) epic fantasy writer, romantic, software engineer, super-nerd, and former Story Grid Certified Editor. He is a proud husband to his warrior-queen Samia and father of three adult gremlins.
Dave lives in the vicinity of Sunnyvale, Texas, where he engineers software for Amazon, bleeds on the krav maga training mat, pretends to shoot competitively, and scribbles novels to keep his sanity.
Dave loves acknowledging, appreciating, studying, and enjoying the darkest elements we see and experience all around and inside us. It would be remiss to go through life ignoring our deepest midnight instincts. What is life if we aren’t experiencing darkness to contrast with light? What is beauty without scars to prove it existed?
He is a multimedia storyteller with his deepest roots in written fiction. Daveās characters are morally gray, assertive anti-heroines (plus the occasional anti-hero)š¦ who point to the grimmest, darkest desires we all struggle with. His books contain more swords, sorcery, and sex than the law allows. š
Nope, Dave doesnāt write about the heroes you want. He creates the monsters you need.
Read. Enjoy. Review.
No, I don’t write about the heroes you want. I make the monsters you need.
DAVE REED
Footnotes (From the Emojis Above)
š Consult your attorney regarding the legal limit of darkness permitted in your local jurisdiction. You have been warned.
š¦ I use the quaint, gender-normative terms for the sake of audience familiarity, not because I actually care much where a heroic agent (luminary or shadow) falls on the biological, attraction, or any other spectrum. I don’t care. You do you, whatever makes you happy, you wonderful, wacky what-the-fuck. I love you the way you are.
Latest Updates
Tales from the Grimdark Side… š
Spoiler: The bedslave who became the first priestess of the Raven Queen
ā ļø Here be spoilers. You have been warned. ā ļø The story so far Conseca maern Azzar first appears in Raven Queen, Arise when Saeverra tempts Illyria with salvation from the slaughter planned for the highlandā¦
The Damsel in Distress Problem
TL;DR: I came not here to praise the trope, but to bury it. Just not for the reasons you might think. A lot of people have deconstructed, lampooned, or otherwise whined about the Damsel inā¦
Book Recommendation: Sons to Keep by A.S. Etaski
You think you want the Matriarchy? You can’t handle the Matriarchy. Born a healer into a culture obsessed with power, Irrwaer had few prospects beyond changing bandages and emptying bedpans. Among the matriarchs, sex isā¦