Randy Richards has been playing Dungeons and Dragons since the late 70s, but started in earnest in the early 80s. "In the 1980s," Randy says, "we had the Basic D&D boxed game in our Gifted & Talented class, and I used to play a Cajun halfling. The other kids loved it, especially the accent." Randy graduated from Chalmette High School in 1984, then from college in 1989, and moved to Tennessee.
Commenting on the decision to move, Randy says, "My family is from Cades Cove in the Smoky Mountains. I just wanted to get closer to my roots - not to mention its gorgeous up there - so I moved to an area near Gatlinburg." The move proved to be beneficial for Randy's career in photography. "People know me for my writing," he says, "but they don't know my day job is photography (DanceBackwards.com). Olan Mills, which operates out of Chattanooga, hired me to work for them as a kids photographer, then a glamour photographer, and finally a church directory photographer."
After five years in Tennessee, Randy was transferred to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and started a family. "This is when I first got published. I wrote "Dark Magic in New Orleans" for Dungeon Magazine. After receiving scores of complimentary letters from people all over the world, I decided to start writing on a regular basis. With all my traveling with work there really wasn't time, but while driving I would make notes on anything available: cardboard boxes, gum wrappers, paper cups -- anything!"
In the late 90s Randy hosted a series of Gen Con events, one of which included the co-creators of D&D, Gary Gygax and Dave rneson, and other big names including Frank Mentzer, Lisa Stevens (now CEO of Paizo Publishing), and Anne Brown. "This got my name known in the industry, although at the time that wasn't my goal. I was just trying to have fun and spread the joy of gaming."
A few years passed before Randy got the idea to write a book. "My daughter was getting older, and I wanted to have more time for her, so I decided to start my own photography business. The icing on the cake is that I had more time available for writing. I would copy the scrap notes down when I got home, and as I was reading through them I realized they started to form a swamp theme. Thats when I started writing Dreadmire, although back then the working title was Soggy Bottoms, then it morphed to Deadmire ("dead" not "dread"), then Sinking Forest, then Monster Swamp, and finally Dreadmire. All of these names were already in the book (various factions have their own name for the swamp), including Dreadmire, I just couldn't decide which one to use. In the end we did some polling and discovered the Dreadmire name had the preferred euphony, so thats the one we decided to go with.
There were some false starts and delays before Dreadmire came to print. "First I submitted it to Necromancer Games, but we had creative differences and parted ways. That very same day I was contacted by Spellbinder Games. Their book store was in the same building as a dance school I photograph. So they knew of me beyond what they had seen at Gen Con, Dragon*Con, CoastCon, and Crescent City Con, or read in Dungeon magazine. They faxed me a proposal and I signed right away. They gave me a lot of control over the project. After my other experiences that was very important to me."
And the rest, as they say, is history.
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