David Backman Biography

David Backman is an author and volunteer who lives in Apple Valley, Minnesota. Dave was born and raised in Minneapolis and has lived most of his life in the Twin Cities. However, he is also officially (by order of the Governor of Texas) a naturalized Texas citizen, y’all. The award-winning The Lightning in the Collied Night is his debut novel.

Dave retired in 2023 from a 44-year career in Information Technology that focused on enterprise software architecture, design, and development. He wrote a lot in his career, including co-authoring a couple of books, but he didn’t write fiction . . . at least he didn’t intentionally write fiction. In addition to writing, Dave enjoys volunteering and spending time with his wife Joanna and their three children. His main hobby is searching for a parallel universe in which the Minnesota Vikings have won a Super Bowl, or even been in a Super Bowl in the past 45 years.

Dave is a life-long sci-fi fan. His favorite authors include Charlie Jane Anders, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and Cixin Liu. His favorite sci-fi shows and movies include 2001: A Space Odyssey, About Time, Alien, Arrival, Back to the Future, Battlestar Galactica (2004), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, District 9, E.T., Everything Everywhere All at Once, Ex Machina, Firefly/Serenity, Galaxy Quest, Guardians of the Galaxy, Independence Day, Interstellar, Lost in Space (2018), Planet of the Apes (1968), Stargate SG-1, the Star Trek series, the Star Wars series, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Iron Giant, The Martian, Twilight Zone, The X-Files, and Wall-E.

Dave has earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics (most of which he forgot a long time ago) and an MBA in Information Management. He holds certifications in several IT-related subjects, including all the major Cloud providers, which helps him keep his head in the clouds while writing. Connect with Dave on Linked In at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmbackman/.