About Daniel Roy Greenfeld

Grimdark Fantasy Author


Based in Manila and London, Daniel Roy Greenfeld is the Amazon best-selling co-author of non-fiction web development books. He has given keynote speeches at numerous academic and professional software conferences around the world. Daniel has worked for NASA. He has authored many popular open-source utility libraries, which are in production use by thousands of organizations, including Fortune 500 companies. He is a husband and a father.

He has decided to make the leap from non-fiction to fiction writing. Long has he wanted to write stories where characters die like fruitflies. He writes grimdark fantasy stories in the vein of Mark Lawrence, Michael R. Fletcher, and Anna Smith Spark.

For inspiration he draws on decades of reading fiction and researching history. Supplementing this is years of weapons combat training in Kendo, fencing, FMA, and HEMA. He has a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a third-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and seven years of classes in both Muay Thai and Capoeira. He's also spent a fair amount of time riding horses.

His writing follows these six themes that are common to the grimdark fantasy genre:

  1. Moral ambiguity - There are no clear heroes. Characters are flawed, selfish, or compromised. Even the "best" people make brutal choices.
  2. Bleak, cynical worldview - The world is harsh, unfair, and often meaningless. Institutions are corrupt, power dominates, and idealism usually fails.
  3. Graphic violence and brutality - Violence isn’t stylized or heroic—it's messy and painful, and always with consequences to protagonists.
  4. No happy ending - Victories are partial, temporary, or come at terrible cost.
  5. Power over morality - Characters succeed not by being good, but by being ruthless, clever, or lucky.
  6. Deconstruction of traditional fantasy tropes - The classics upon which the fantasy genre is built are subverted.

Here are the stories featured on this website, either of which you can read today for FREE by clicking the links on the story titles:

  • The Curse - About the awakening of evil in a quiet mountain village.
  • Everyone Dies - Seven companions walk a path no one survives.