Alphonse Schaller was born in Southern California and raised in a house with a bookshelf in every room. A regular visitor to libraries, he fell in love with the horror and dread of H.P. Lovecraft and Jorge Luis Borges, as well as the sweeping fantasies of Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. He started writing in the third grade and has much improved since. Zone Rouge is his first collection of short stories. He is also known as Rowan Cullen.