D. J. Butler

David John Butler is an award-winning American speculative fiction author. His epic flintlock fantasy novel Witchy Winter won the 2018 AML Award for Best Novel and the 2018 Whitney Award for Best Speculative Fiction. Both Witchy Eye and Witchy Winter were finalists for the Dragon Award in 2017 and 2018 (respectively), and Witchy Eye was a preliminary nominee for the Gemmell Morningstar Award.

Life and career

Butler completed his undergraduate studies at Brigham Young University, where he received a bachelor's degree in Near-Eastern studies. He then attended the New York University School of Law, earning his Juris Doctor in 1999. He spent over a decade working as a lawyer for companies including Micron Technology and Intel before opening an independent firm in 2010. He is employed as a corporate trainer, using his skills as a storyteller to educate business people.

He began pursuing his childhood dream of being an author in 2010. His steampunk Western novel City of Saints was a 2012 Whitney Award finalist in the speculative fiction category. It was later republished by WordFire Press in 2016. Butler's first traditionally published novel was the 2016 middle-grade steampunk adventure The Kidnap Plot. Between 2016 and 2018, he worked as acquisitions editor for WordFire Press.

In 2017, Baen published the first of Butler's American epic flintlock fantasy series, Witchy Eye, set in an alternate 1815 America. It was a finalist for a Dragon Award in 2017 and was a preliminary nominee for a Gemmell Morningstar Award in 2018. The second book in the series, Witchy Winter, won the 2018 AML Award for Best Novel, the 2018 Whitney Award for Best Speculative Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2018 Dragon Award for Best Alternate History Novel.

Butler lives in Utah.

Awards and honors

Butler has received the following awards and honors: