I'm Rick Dakan. I live, write, and teach in Sarasota, Florida, my home and native town. I am a professor of Creative Writing at the Ringling College of Art and Design, where I teach classes on writing for video games, writing for tabletop games, narrative design, writing for shared worlds, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and AI. I grew up in Florida before going on to attend college at American University in Washington DC (where I earned a BA in History) and then Ohio State University (where I didn't earn an MA in History). It was in those bleak, cold, Ohio years of the mid-90's that I started writing for a living, and I haven't stopped since. Over the next few years I scratched out a rewarding if poor living writing role-playing game books for numerous product lines. In 2000 I came up with an idea for an online computer game which eventually became the hit 2004 release, City of Heroes. My first novel, Geek Mafia, was published in 2006, followed by the sequels Geek Mafia: Mile Zero in 2008 and Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues in 2009. My fourth novel, The Cthulhu Cult: A Novel of Lovecraftian Obsession, was released in 2010, when I also completed my Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing through the Rainier Writers Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. I went on to found and serve as lead game designer for the ill-fated Mob Rules Games. From 2013 to 2015 I worked as a writer and level builder for Blue Mammoth Games. Throughout this time I also wrote numerous articles for newspapers and magazines about video games, theme parks, and local restaurant news. I have taught at Ringling College of Art & Design in the Creative Writing program since 2016 and continue to write books and design games including 2023’s Writing Sci-fi, Fantasy & Horror for Dummies (with Ryan G. Van Cleave). Chimera House is my latest creative project, combining my love of haunted house stories and my work as Chair of the AI Task Force at Ringling College.