Joel Dau was born in Iowa, but ended up in Rhode Island by the second grade. It was enough time in the Midwest to learn to not be afraid of traveling over thirty minutes to get somewhere, but there is little reason to go that far in New England. His real formative years came during middle school when an traumatic event drew his attention inward and amplified his introversion.
That period of social retreat was also the introductory age of PCs, anime, Magic the Gathering, and a new generation of comic books, so there was plenty to help him isolate himself. This is when the character of Talphi, the subject of his first novel, was created. Joel's imagination drew from the fantasy worlds others created, but Talphi never quiet fit into those worlds, so he stayed an imagination as his own world kept forming.
In his late twenties the repressed memory of trauma returned after a friend had teased him by playing a particular song on repeat. This was the start of Joel's trans-formative years. Remembering that pain and seeing the success of other late start authors motivated him. That's when he started preparing and writing his magnum opus, The Determined World. The work was therapeutic, but he wanted it to be read too. The character of Talphi needed a fully developed fictional world to reach readers.