Well even as a kid, on family vacations driving across the country (I've been to 49 US states in my lifetime), I was always the one with my nose in the road atlas - identifying cool places to stop whereever we happen to be. I've always been a map afficionado. In high school, I can remember drawing naval ports, then playing games of trying to bomb ships by flipping pennies onto it - this was before I discovered D&D in my junior year in high school (1977).

The reason I first joined the Cartographers' Guild, however, was shortly after building a website offering large format printing services for gamers and publishers (Gamer Printshop) in early 2007, which I still operate. I joined several RPG forums like RPG.net and ENWorld, and I joined this site. From there, I started participating in over 2 dozen map challenges, have won 4. Then I started getting map commission requests by various publishers - and became a professional freelance fantasy cartographer. Now I'm an RPG publisher, game developer/designer. After recently getting a successful Kickstarter to fund a series of map tutorials guide books - I am writing them at this moment, and advancing my career as a game publisher.

The CG was my stepping stone into game design and publishing...