Daniel M. Ford

Daniel M. Ford is an American fantasy author born in 1978 in Baltimore, Maryland. He is best known for The Warden series, beginning with Ordination, which follows a rural warden navigating knights, wizards, and imaginary wars and battles in a secondary-world fantasy setting, and continuing through Necrobane and Advocate. He also wrote The Paladin Trilogy, comprising Stillbright and Crusade, following a paladin's arc across political and religious conflict. Ford's fiction is grounded in classic epic-fantasy structures, knighthood, wizardry, institutional religion, while foregrounding grounded, working-class protagonists rather than chosen-one heroes. His bibliography has grown steadily since his debut, with new Warden novels continuing to extend the series into the mid-2020s.