S.L. Rowland

Simple and easy prose. I like to craft immersive worlds filled with adventure, heart, and a touch of humor.

I grew up in a small town in rural South Carolina. I think it shaped me in a lot of ways and gave me an appreciation for the simpler things in life. My world expanded once I was able to move away and experience other places. When I was 20, I spent a summer living on an island in the Caribbean. After that, I lived in bigger cities like Atlanta, Los Angeles, and now St. Louis.

I always loved losing myself in a good story. I devoured Goosebumps during my middle school years and moved on to Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter in high school.

That's tough. Maybe Brandon Sanderson just for the ability to put out such massive books so frequently.

I feel like this changes every year, but currently:

JRR Tolkien

Travis Baldree

Matt Dinniman

John Steinbeck

George RR Martin

Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's such a crazy premise, yet it's one of the most engaging stories I've ever read.

Rhoren from Cursed Cocktails. He's a blood mage suffering from chronic pain due to using his magic to defend the realm. A lot of his symptoms and struggles, like aching and burning joints, were based on my own experiences living with an autoimmune disease.

Cursed Cocktails. This one was a passion project, and I had very few expectations for it. It became my best seller and spawned a series of similar books set in the same world.

Nothing too fancy. I have a desk that converts to a standing desk. There's a bookshelf on each side of the desk filled with my favorite books, and it's speckled with nerdy trinkets and figures. I always have a notebook open for writing myself notes or working out details, and post-its of my yearly goals and the many things I need reminders of. It gets the job done, but I've always wanted to have an office at the top of a wizard tower.

I like to read on my Kindle, so I'm pretty flexible. It's always nice sitting by the pool or on the beach with a nice breeze, though.