Don Bassingthwaite

Don Bassingthwaite is a Canadian author from Toronto.

Early life and education Bassingthwaite was born in Meaford, Ontario. He played Dungeons & Dragons in high school, attending the Georgian Bay District Secondary School where his project on the root of squares won the senior secondary division, and for his application of computers he won the District 23 of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation book awards. He was one of four Georgian Bay Secondary School Grade 13 students who earned the Wilfrid Laurier University scholarship by winning the Reach for the Top district finals, and was the co-recipient of the three grade 13 English awards for the Meaford Graduation diplomas at Georgian Bay Secondary School.

Bassingthwaite continued playing Dungeons & Dragons while earning a B.A. in anthropology at the University of Toronto. He was a student in the master of museum studies program, also working part-time in the university bookstore, and remained involved in the school while starting his professional career, and in 1995 he began a two-year assignment running the UT Press's (UTP) Custom Publishing Service which he considered his fondest achievement.

White Wolf Publishing Bassingthwaite started writing fiction in his spare time, and submitted a story to Dragon magazine that was rejected. In 1993 at age 22, during his first year of graduate studies, he submitted a story called "Book of the Dead" to White Wolf Publishing, set in their world of Vampire: The Masquerade. White Wolf used this story in a supplemental book for the Vampire game. Bassingthwaite also sold another short story to White Wolf that was published in an anthology.

Wizards of the Coast Bassingthwaite has written fiction for Wizards of the Coast set in the Dungeons & Dragons worlds.

Alternity After Bassingthwaite graduated with Master of Museum Studies, he wrote another novel for the World of Darkness setting, Breathe Deeply (1999), but he then started to look at new worlds being developed by Wizards of the Coast (WotC) for their science fiction role-playing game Alternity. He pitched an idea for a novel set in their Star*Drive space opera setting, but WotC was not interested. He then pitched a story idea for their Dark•Matter setting; this was accepted in 2000, and became If Whispers Call, the second of four Dark•Matter novels written by various authors. Bassingthwaite also wrote the fifth novel of the series, By Dust Consumed, but submitted it for publication in 2001 just as WotC cancelled the Alternity line of products; it was never published, but was made available as a PDF for a limited time.

After finishing The Dragon Below series, Bassingthqaite decided to become a full-time writer, and his next assignment was a new series concerning events in Eberron's goblin nation of Darguun using some of the characters from The Dragon Below; this became The Legacy of the Dhakaan series: The Doom of Kings (2008), The Word of Traitors (2009), and The Tyranny of Ghosts (2010).

Bassingthwaite also contributed a number of short stories. In Issue 5 (Spring 2003), Bassingthwaite wrote his first sword & sorcery short story, "Barbarian Instinct". Alan Lattimore, on the review site Tangent Online, wrote "Cacia is a loved and indulged daughter of a well respected city merchant. Pawel is the Barbarian fighter hired to guard her and guide her from the city to safety. [...] Cacia and Pawel are both engaging characters, their situation is credible, their interaction set off sparks and their ultimate acceptance of the value of the other feels solid. A nice tale well told."

Other fiction In 2012, Bassinghtwaite contributed a short story to the dark science fiction and music anthology Foreshadows: The Ghosts of Zero.

In 2016, he published a collection of comedy horror short stories, Cocktails at Seven, Apocalypse at Eight, featuring the gay protagonist Derby Cavendish. Reviewer Heather Grove enjoyed the book, calling it "marvellous [...] The characters are fantastic, with plenty of hilarity and depth to them. The world of otherworldly creatures is built well, with a glamour that helps to keep the ordinary people from remembering the strange things that go on around them."