Desmond Robertson grew up in Chicago's Humboldt Park listening to his mother tell bedtime stories about small, brave creatures navigating a world much larger than themselves. Those stories never really ended. They grew into Vaelora.

He moved to St. Louis at 19 and spent years turning those early tales into a fully realized fantasy universe. His debut novel, The Sagas of Vaelora: The Burrow and the Blade, is an epic anthropomorphic adventure drawing on the tradition of Brian Jacques, Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis while building something entirely its own. Readers have called it the spiritual successor to Redwall they stopped expecting to find.

Robertson is currently at work on Book 2. The world of Kalidoria is not finished with him yet.