Nicholas Roudas is an independent fantasy author, illustrator, and historical fencer located in Bozeman, Montana. Born in the United States, and raised partly in the Peloponnese, he grew up amid Greek mythology and tragedy. As an adult, he attended Montana State University, and earned a B.S. in Microbiology, with a minor in Genetics.
His background includes scientific research, clinical shadowing, advanced calisthenics, competitive swordsmanship, visual art, and years spent teaching and leading his local historical fencing club, Lost Arts Historical Fencing. A connective tissue disorder eventually forced him away from the athletic pursuits that helped shape his understanding of discipline, injury, limitation, and endurance.
His fiction draws from science, religion, philosophy, martial arts practice,and lived experience to examine moral choice under extreme pressure. He calls his approach stark fantasy: epic fantasy in which heroism is sincere, but neither protected nor glamorized. Suffering may remain unredeemed, and people are defined less by what happens to them, than by what they choose to do with it. Written and illustrated over eight-and-a-half years, The Fallstreak Arsenal: A Sound of Steel is his debut novel. Across his work, Roudas returns to power, trauma, love, institutional failure, and ending cycles of harm, without pretending that every wound becomes wisdom.
Nicholas Roudas 