My life is inexorably intertwined with fantasy, science fiction, and games.

I have been addicted to fantasy and science fiction stories since I read The Hobbit and Jonathan Livingston Seagull at the age of 12. Prior to those two seminal works, I was an avid mystery reader, starting with Encyclopedia Brown novels and Ellery Queen magazine before moving on to Hercule Poirot and, of course, Sherlock Holmes. By the time I found fantasy, I had read all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes stories and novels. I still have the giant, two-volume omnibus of every story.

My new love of fantasy and science fiction led me to role-playing games (D&D and Traveler being my initial forays into that world), which then brought me to the day that my wife introduced us both to Magic: The Gathering. By then I had a writing-adjacent day job as a technical editor. When the chance came to interview for a job on Duelist magazine (the in-house publication for Wizards of the Coast dedicated to the new trading card game), I jumped at the opportunity. We packed up our budding family and crossed the country.

That job gave me my first opportunity to write tie-in fiction. After writing a lot of flavor text for early Magic cards, I was asked to write guide books for the Urza cycle of card sets. I wrote short stories for those books that acted as introductions to the larger stories of the sets. Those stories led to short stories in a series of Magic: The Gathering anthologies and my first novel, Judgment.

Since then, I have written seven novels in various game universes, including four set on Necromunda in the Warhammer 40K universe and the first Mage Wars novel — Nature of the Beast. I also have published more than a dozen short stories, most of them tie-ins to gaming worlds, but a few set in worlds of my own devising.

Over the years, I have even spent time writing for games themselves. As I mentioned, I wrote flavor text for Magic: The Gathering, but I also have worked on numerous video games, including Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, TERA, ZMR, HAWKEN, and Crosswords Plus (on the Nintendo 3DS). More recently, I have moved back to the analog gaming world, writing material for a slew of card and board games for Funko Games, including Pan Am, Godzilla Tokyo Clash, and War With the Evil Power Master (a Choose Your Own Adventure game).

Looking forward, I have two more novels in production (these are both outside of gaming universes) and two new Funko games I contributed to that have not yet been announced. Watch this space for news on all of those projects.

Cory J. Herndon has written or co-written numerous novels and short stories in the Magic: the Gathering line, including the finale of the Mirrodin books, the entirety of the Ravnica Cycle, and (with Scott McGough) the Lorwyn novels (plus one novella). His first book, The Living Dead, was written under the pseudonym T.H. Lain. He's edited, designed, and written material for pen-and-paper roleplaying games including the original Star Wars D20 RPG book Ultimate Alien Anthology.

He has also created and written narratives for video games such as Guild Wars, WildStar, Unknown 9, and Threads of Time in his day job as a game developer.

Cory lives in British Columbia with his wife, author S.P. Miskowski, and very large cat named Macho.

The New York Times best-selling author Philip Athans started writing stories the second he became literate, and an early love of movies and TV sent him to film school. He continued to write in college and even played in a punk rock band before he discovered that being a good writer and being a good musician don’t necessarily go hand in hand. His degree in Cinema & Photography landed him in a string of music retail positions where he worked long hours for low pay, but got a lot of free CDs and tickets to concerts, and met some interesting people. But that was just the beginning of a career that has spanned all three stages of the entertainment industry: selling other people’s work, helping refine and develop other people’s work, and putting work of his own out there.

Before he even sold a short story, he started publishing his own magazine: Alternative Fiction & Poetry, which in its short, five-issue life span went from complete obscurity to semi-obscurity. Still, there’s never been a better crash course in running a creative business than just diving in and doing it yourself.

While still selling records he set out to turn a hobby (role-playing games) into a career. A number of freelance assignments ended up getting him his first paying job in publishing. He sent a proposal for a freelance project to TSR, Inc. (the creators of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS®) and the vice president of the games division was so impressed by the proposal and his resume that he passed it on to the executive editor of the publishing division, who was looking for a new editor. Phil apparently said the right things in the interview and in 1995 he became the newest editor for TSR Books, one of the premiere publishers of fantasy fiction in the world. His editing job moved to Seattle two years later when TSR merged with Wizards of the Coast, and Phil moved with it, finding a new home and a string of successes in the Pacific Northwest.

The best thing about that job was the intense, hands-on development of complex intellectual properties that went way beyond traditional genre publishing. His skills in that regard are exemplified in the great leaps forward that the FORGOTTEN REALMS® novel line made under his care. Phil has been working with established authors like R.A. Salvatore (whose FORGOTTEN REALMS novel The Pirate King, broke the top three on the New York Times hardcover fiction best seller list), but he’s also had the enviable opportunity of discovering new talent and starting some outstanding young authors on successful careers. He left Wizards of the Coast in June 2010, a little bloody, but not beaten.

Somewhere in all of that he got married to a very patient woman and had a couple of great kids. He continues to be a full blown media junky: a Comcast Digital Platinum subscriber, and collector of vintage Ace Science Fiction Doubles, with a huge library of books, comic books, video games, board games, roleplaying games, and DVDs.