Patrick O'Dell is a Baton Rouge author, grant writer, and graduate of the University of Nebraska's MFA in Creative Writing program. He began writing at sixteen and has since created many stories, including Gods and Monsters, the first book in the Godfire Saga, an urban fantasy series following Elias Fetch, a supernatural fixer and sometimes detective, trying to stay alive in a world that seems set on the opposite. When Patrick isn't writing, he can usually be found reading, gaming, or spending time with his family.
Hi, I'm Patrick O'Dell, a writer from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Curiosity has been the defining trait of my life. Whether it's science, history, people, or the mechanics of storytelling itself, I've always wanted to understand how things work. Writing became the place where all of those interests came together.
But getting here wasn't a straight line, and I certainly didn't do it alone.
I earned my bachelor's degree in Biology (a degree I genuinely value, but somewhere along the way I realized that writing was what I wanted to spend my life doing). Years later, with Meg's unwavering support and guidance from mentors like Dr. Ernest Rufleth, Kevin Clouther, Charlene Donaghy, and many others, I earned my MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska Omaha in 2023. My time there shaped me in ways I'm still discovering. Today, I work as a grant writer for a nonprofit in Baton Rouge while continuing to create stories from the wonderfully weird corners of my imagination.
Now, to move on to the stuff that is how I am instead of who I am.
As I said before, curiosity has always been the common thread running through my life. I have an endless, and often invasive, need to learn. If I don't know something, chances are I'm going to want to. Smartphones have made that both easier and much, much worse. One innocent question has a habit of turning into a three-hour rabbit hole before life eventually reminds me I was supposed to be doing something else.
It's also what drew me to writing in the first place. I love understanding how stories work just as much as I love telling them. Character voice, worldbuilding, structure, pacing, prose, I can't get enough of it. Give me a beautifully crafted sentence, a perfectly timed twist, or a character who feels undeniably real, and I'll probably spend the next hour trying to figure out exactly how the author pulled it off.
Science fiction and fantasy are where I feel most at home because they let us strip away the limits of reality without stripping away what makes us human. They let me wander through impossible worlds, ask impossible questions, and explore people in situations that could never exist anywhere else. At the end of the day, though, every story comes back to the same thing: people.
More than anything, I write because it's fun, fulfilling, and it brings me immense joy seeing someone enthralled by a good story. Stories make us laugh, wonder, hurt, and, if we're lucky, remind us we're not as alone as we sometimes feel. If one of mine leaves you a little more curious about the world, sparks your imagination, makes you smile, or simply gives you a good time for a few hours, then I've accomplished what I set out to do.
At the end of the day, my writing is not something I want to keep to myself. Stories are meant to be shared. Every world I build, and every journey I create, is an invitation for us to experience something together. I hope you have as much fun reading these stories as I have had writing them, and I hope you'll come along for whatever adventure comes next.
I write science fiction and fantasy because they let me ask very human questions in extraordinary places. I love building expansive worlds, weird magic systems, and histories that feel lived in, but those things have always been in service of the people who inhabit them. My stories are ultimately about growth, identity, and the choices that define us. I'm fascinated by characters who are trying to become better than they were yesterday, even when they fail, because that's what being human looks like. Whether they're saving worlds or simply trying to find their place within one, I'm interested in the messy, imperfect journey of becoming whatever you are meant to be and the path that takes.
I tend to gravitate toward writing character-driven stories with equal parts adventure and humor, with a dash of heart when the moment is right. My protagonists are often irreverent, stubborn, and far more complicated than they'd like anyone to believe. They're the sort of people who joke when they're uncomfortable, make questionable decisions with good intentions, and spend as much time wrestling with themselves as they do whatever external threat is trying to kill them that day. I enjoy villains whose motivations make you uncomfortable because they make sense, and worlds that invite you to look in the forests and under rocks. I want readers to finish one of my books feeling like they've spent time with people they'll remember long after the plot has faded.
There are so many things that happen between Gods and Monsters and Sins of the Father, and I wouldn't want to spoil anything for anyone interested in reading them, but I will say that I am having a blast watching Elias and the others meet new creatures, explore new places, and struggle in new and, unfortunately for them, interesting ways.