I’ve been reading fantasy since I was little, and began writing it in 2016. My influences vary. Harry Potter was good, but I most loved the stories of Redwall which Brian Jacques told. As an adult, fiction highlights include E.R. Eddison (The Worm Ouroboros), Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time), Terry Pratchett (Discworld), and Ursula K. LeGuin (Earthsea). I also adore ancient literature, especially epic. Some favorites include Satyamurti’s “retelling” of the Mahabharata, Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, and of course the Iliad (my favorite translation is by McCrorie).

I also read quite a bit of nonfiction, mostly in history or philosophy. Some notable influences include Shamanism by Mircea Eliade, Trevor Bryce’s works on the Hittites, the Histories of Herodotus and the Peloponnesian War of Thucydides, Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, and most of the Platonic corpus (especially Timaeus and Phaedrus).

My history with roleplaying games began with Dungeons & Dragons 3.5E and Pathfinder 1E in high school. A friend introduced me to RuneQuest 3 during college and I’ve largely played D100 variants since then. Currently, I play a trickster in a weekly game of the current edition of RuneQuest (RQG), gamemaster another weekly RQG game about pirates, and play in a biweekly game of RuneQuest 3 with oodles of houserules.

My academic background is in philosophy, classics, and music. I graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in 2015, and completed my Masters in Creative Writing (Fiction) with National University in 2023. I’m a full member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), and I volunteer on the organization’s Game Writing committee.

Apart from my independent publications, my game writing has been published by EN Publishing, Menagerie Press, and Stardust Publications. I’m a frequent contributor to the SFWA Blog, where my articles discuss game design, worldbuilding, and the business of TTRPGs. You can find a complete list of my publications here.

Updated April, 2025.

About Akhelas

“Akhelas” is the imprint under which Austin publishes fiction and TTRPG content by himself and other contributors. It’s named after the primary land of his personal fantasy setting, which he swears is going to get published in depth some day (honest).

Updated April, 2025.

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Updated April, 2025.