Dave Barrett Books in Order

Dave Barrett is a Maine writer, accounting lecturer, and lifelong gamer whose fiction grew out of a question a lot of fantasy fans know well: what if the game stopped being pretend? He teaches at the University of Maine in Orono, and outside class he has spent years around tabletop and live-action roleplaying. Pathfinder is one of his favorite systems, and he has passed the hobby on by running games for his kids and their friends.

Long before he published a novel, he was the eight-year-old who got hooked on Advanced Dungeons and Dragons after his older brother brought it home from high school.

Barrett studied accounting and economics at the College of the Holy Cross, then headed to Boston to work for Arthur Andersen. Public accounting was not the dream. After three years, he left, earned a master's degree in accounting at Indiana University, and moved toward the job he actually wanted, teaching future CPAs. He joined the University of Maine faculty in 2004 and has taught courses including financial accounting and financial statement analysis.

His route into fiction started with National Novel Writing Month. After hearing Chris Baty talk about the project on public radio, Barrett decided to try the November challenge for himself and aim for 50,000 words in 30 days. The habit stuck. He has said that every November became writing season at home, with his family giving him room to disappear into a draft while the usual chores slid a little.

That routine led to It's All Fun and Games, the book that put his name in front of fantasy readers. Written during NaNoWriMo and later selected for publication through the first Nerdist and Inkshares contest, it came out in 2016 and follows a group of teens whose LARP weekend turns into a real, dangerous fantasy quest. Readers who click with Barrett usually like the mix of game culture, portal fantasy, quick pacing, and kids who feel like regular people before the monsters show up.

He wrote that first novel for his kids.

The story continued in More Fun and Games and No More Games, which take Allison, TJ, and their friends farther into the world they never meant to enter and closer to the wizard-king Magnus. Across the trilogy, Barrett keeps coming back to a few things he clearly enjoys: friends under pressure, magic with clear rules, hard choices in the middle of adventure, and the uneasy shift from pretending to be a hero to having to act like one. Even when the stakes get bigger, the books stay rooted in teamwork and the nervous humor of teenagers trying to keep up.

Barrett has also talked about wanting fantasy gaming to feel more open. Making Allison one of the key leads helped him create an entry point for readers who may not already see themselves in that space, especially girls and newcomers. That choice gives the series a useful balance. TJ brings the enthusiasm of a veteran gamer, while Allison asks the questions a first-time reader might ask too.

These days he still lives in Maine, is married, and has three children. He keeps teaching, keeps writing when he can, and still sounds like someone who never lost the fun of rolling up a character and heading off on an adventure.