David A Tatum Books in Order

David A Tatum was born in Ithaca, New York, the son of a fashion designer and a librarian who later worked as a spy. He has said he learned to spell cat when he was four, which made his parents think the writing bug had already arrived. When he was seven, his family moved to Washington, D.C., and that mix of books, curiosity, and city life stayed with him.

In Washington he spent years training in kenpo, and for a while he thought martial arts might become his future. Around the same period he also leaned hard into exploration, joining an adventure-focused organization in high school and later becoming a chapter president. He even went cave-hunting in Virginia while chasing the dream of finding a route to the center of the Earth, a goal that sounds very on-brand for a future fantasy and science fiction writer.

Eventually, writing won.

Tatum has written that after his father's death he inherited a large personal library, and that helped pull him back toward storytelling in a serious way. He also had a history degree and discovered it was not opening many attractive job doors nearby. So he made the less practical, but far more personal, choice and committed himself to professional writing. That practical, unsentimental streak still shows in the way he talks about books, publishing, and the day-to-day work of building a career.

He likes building the machinery behind the adventure.

You can see that clearly in In Treachery Forged, In Forgery Divided, and In Division Imperiled, his Law of Swords novels. Those books follow Prince Maelgyn, Euleilla, and the kingdom of Svieda through invasion, succession trouble, and laws that are supposed to prevent royal bloodshed but end up creating fresh dangers of their own. Tatum likes systems, military structures, political rules, family duty, and the moment when all of them fail at once.

Across genres, his stories tend to favor characters who earn responsibility the hard way. Young officers, heirs, wanderers, and outsiders show up a lot. So do borderlands, old agreements, and worlds where the technical details matter, whether that means the law of succession in a fantasy kingdom or the condition of a half-forgotten warship in deep space.

He shifts gears without really losing that interest in pressure and structure. The Kitsune Stratagem follows Kieras, a young kitsune pulled into politics, exile, and the defense of a growing town. The Merrimack Event moves into military space opera, with academy cadets, mothballed ships, and a training exercise that turns into real combat. Even To the Rink of War, a shorter science fiction piece set in the asteroid belt, keeps his attention on frontier life, improvisation, and people trying to build something useful in difficult conditions.

Tatum also has a nonfiction side. Through Fennec Fox Press and his blog, he has written about self-publishing, worldbuilding, and the unglamorous parts of getting books into readers' hands. In recent years he has described juggling writing with family responsibilities, rebuilding his website after a long interruption, doing occasional book design work for other authors, and planning returns to his ongoing fiction. It is a working writer's life, full of craft, logistics, and the stubborn hope that the next book will get done.