Don Bassingthwaite

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-06

Don Bassingthwaite was born in Meaford, Ontario, Canada, and attended Georgian Bay District Secondary School, where he played Dungeons & Dragons and won academic honors including a science project award. He earned a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Toronto and later entered its Master of Museum Studies program, working part-time at the university bookstore and managing the UT Press Custom Publishing Service from 1995 to 1997, an achievement he has described as among his proudest. His fiction career began after Dragon magazine rejected an early submission; he sold his first story, "Book of the Dead," to White Wolf Publishing in 1993 at age 22, leading to a 1995 fiction contract. He wrote a World of Darkness trilogy (1995-1996) and the Dark•Matter novels (2000-2002) for White Wolf, then moved into Dungeons & Dragons fiction with a Forgotten Realms series (2004) and the Eberron-set Dragon Below trilogy (2005-2006) and Legacy of the Dhakaan trilogy (2008-2010), followed by the Abyssal Plague trilogy (2011-2012). He has also served as a contributing editor for Black Gate magazine, contributed to the anthology Foreshadows: The Ghosts of Zero (2012), and published the comedic horror collection Cocktails at Seven, Apocalypse at Eight (2016), work praised for its accessibility and strong character development.

Universe(s)

Books

• Mistress of the Night (2004) · Forgotten Realms Expanded Canon
• The Yellow Silk (2004) · Forgotten Realms Expanded Canon
• The Temple of Yellow Skulls (2011) · Forgotten Realms Expanded Canon
• The Eye of the Chained God (2012) · Forgotten Realms Expanded Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 40 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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