Since he was never good at sports, when a childhood injury barred Rocco from physical activity one summer, he was ecstatic to discover how much he loved reading. J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Terry Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth helped him escape the mundane; Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time and Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives ensured he’d never go back.

This love for world-building and escapism seeped into his daily life. Rocco often drew maps of his back yard and turned chores into epic adventures with his younger brother. One day, after drawing a map of a fantasy world shaped by the battles of celestial forces, Rocco decided to put a number 2 pencil to a legal size page and wrote a few sentences. From there, his love for writing began.