Like many fantasy authors, Steve Williamson was introduced to the genre when he played his first game of Dungeons & Dragons. It was during a family camping trip in May, 1980, and as he and two friends sat inside a travel trailer rolling dice and fighting orcs, the air outside became gritty and hard to breathe. It was permeated with the fine gray ash spewing out of Mount St. Helens which was erupting just sixty miles away.

Steve now lives in Western Oregon in the shadow of another active volcano, Mount Hood.