About the Author

There is a table in Tori Gibson’s kitchen. It’s nothing exceptional—something her parents bought at Costco more than thirty years ago. But it’s the same table where her mother taught her to read, where she wrote her first stories on scrap paper, and ultimately where she wrote her first novel.

So if any “one” thing is to blame for how she turned out, it’s probably that table.

These days, Tori writes fantasy by night and works in a male-dominated IT field by day. Somewhere along the way she also earned a B.A. in World Politics and escaped a high-control religion. It all makes perfect sense. Probably.

Tori is a lifelong student of mythology, history, and comparative religion. Growing up in northern New England, she developed an early fascination with landscapes where Indigenous and colonial histories overlap—places where old names endure long after the stories behind them have been forgotten.

Those interests continue to shape her fiction. Her work explores memory, identity, empire, and the ways ordinary people survive extraordinary systems of power. Although her worlds are entirely fictional, they are deeply informed by the histories, cultures, and landscapes that inspired them.

Invictus: Son of Salt is a standalone companion novel set in the world of Garden in Flames, an epic fantasy series currently in development.

When she isn’t writing, Tori spends her time working a day job that pays the bills, researching obscure historical topics that somehow become plot points, and convincing everyday people that swamp oxen are real (because they are).