Guest Writer JD Byrne

JD Byrne started practicing law in West Virginia more than 20 years ago. It wasn’t too long after that he decided he needed some chances to make up the story for once, to make it come out the way it should, or he’d go mad. He started writing short fiction, mostly science fiction with a little bit a fantasy thrown in, before he discovered National Novel Writing Month in 2007 and took a shot at writing longer stuff. Over several years, and more than a few false starts, he published his first novel, Moore Hollow in 2015. It’s a story of family secrets, political corruption, and zombies – but not the kind people usually think of.

In 2016, he released The Water Road, the first volume of the trilogy of the same name, to be followed by The Endless Hills (2016) and The Bay of Sins (2017). The trilogy is a story of explosive secrets revealed and the attempts by the woman who found them to keep them from consuming her world in a blaze of revenge.

In 2019, he released Gods of the Empire, the first volume of the Unari Empire trilogy, about a steampunk work whose single superpower is starting to show cracks. The two main characters navigate the shifting world while digging deep for secrets that others wish would remain hidden. Widows of the Empire (2021) continues the saga, while Heroes of the Empire will bring it all to a startling conclusion early in 2023.

Many of Byrne’s shorter works can be found on his website or in publications like Aether & Ichor and the Flash Fiction Podcast. His latest story, “The Consequences of Sin,” was part of The Dancing Plague: A Collection of Utter Speculation, released in the fall of 2022 by Speculation Publications.