Skylar Dates grew up west of the bays and shores of Port Clinton, Ohio in the kind of rust belt, cornfield town that would become the backdrop for his authorial universe. The sleepy Midwest burg where nothing of import ever happened led Skylar to spending so much time at the library that the librarians thought he was homeschooled. Those early years lost in the stacks were the primordial cauldron for the writer he would become. Where else do you escape the empty fields, but into the tales others have written — and, eventually, into stories of your own making?

Before he wrote horror, though, he wanted to be a rockstar. A hired guitar player for Latin bands, electronica outfits, rock groups, and a firestorm stint chasing heavy metal stardom in Los Angeles eventually collided with harsh reality. But the decade he spent grinding at the altar of rock reshaped how he heard the world. It was atmospheric. Gritty and staccato. He no longer craved the spotlight, but the shadow.

When the music career ended, he rebuilt from scratch: corporate work, debt, a slow climb through travel and technology companies. He eventually came back to his original creative passion. Storytelling. Skylar spent years relearning writing craft through an eight-novel fantasy saga, a set of experimental books in borrowed styles, and the novella Whatever Happened to Elisma, Ohio, which was selected for the Inkfort Press Writer's Derby. Elisma became the marker for the kind of writer he intended to be.