Possessed with an enduring love of the outdoors and an explorer’s soul, Davis started backpacking before he was old enough to shave. Tied with his love of the mountains, where good hard stone could be found under foot, is a passion for experience. He has hiked with nothing but a traveling kilt and a bed roll through the mountains, drank from running streams, bathed in roaring waterfalls, and slept in the wilderness in earshot of mountain lions.
He has flown in antique bombers, slept on floating warships, chased tornadoes, swam salt-marshes, descended into abandoned mines, and ate his meals on the crumbling remains of a lost fortress. His explorer’s heart has brought him miles down lonely bayous to explore forgotten Spanish ruins, led him on journeys down the mighty Mississippi River where he slept on desolate islands, and guided him through the remnants of ghost towns now lost to the world from Hurricane Katrina’s wrath.
Davis has conducted workshops in creative writing and has led numerous backpacking expeditions in Alabama, Georgia, and the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina. Following Hurricane Katrina, he was involved with relief efforts on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, roofing disaster sheds, running chain saws, as well as flying numerous damage-estimate flights in a small, two-seat Cessna.
Davis E. Riddle is married with two children and lives in southern Mississippi. He is a consulting forester and president of his own firm. He also teaches mathematics, bringing his real-world experience to students in the rural South. His other works include the novel Rise of the Dark Son, as well as “Boared to Death” in the horror anthology The Guest Book, “Fiend Fighter” found in the mosaic novel Skein of Shadows by The Wandering Men, “Mountain Ghost” in Southern Fried Weirdness, as well as the web serial “Grey Beginnings.”
