ToddHDow.com has been part of my life for more than twenty years.
Over that time it’s been a personal website, a résumé, a place to share projects, and occasionally a home for whatever happened to capture my attention at the time.
If you’ve visited before, you might notice that things look a little different.
Not because I’ve started over.
Because I’ve finally decided to become intentional about where I’m headed.
For years I’ve talked about writing novels, building worlds, running memorable tabletop RPG campaigns, and exploring the ideas that have fascinated me throughout my life. Those dreams always existed somewhere in the background, squeezed into evenings, weekends, and the occasional burst of inspiration between the demands of career and family.
Eventually I realized something.
If I was ever going to take writing seriously, I had to stop treating it like something I fit into the margins of life.
It deserved the same commitment I’d given my career.
ToddHDow Studios is that commitment.
It isn’t a new beginning.
It’s the next chapter.
Following the Thread
I’ve never been particularly good at having just one hobby.
What I’ve always enjoyed is understanding how things work.
Sometimes that’s a cyber attack.
Sometimes it’s a medieval battle.
Sometimes it’s a fantasy world.
Sometimes it’s a beautifully crafted collector’s edition sitting on a bookshelf.
Once something captures my imagination, I tend to dive in completely.
I’m a lifelong reader and, admittedly, a bit of a book collector. Stephen King’s early novels, the Fighting Fantasy books by Steve Jackson that first taught me how stories could branch based on my decisions, epic fantasy like Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, modern favourites like Dungeon Crawler Carl—my shelves are filled with stories that reward curiosity and immerse you in carefully built worlds.
That same curiosity spills into technology. I spend time experimenting with artificial intelligence, software-defined radios, emerging cybersecurity tools, and whatever new technology catches my attention. Not because I need another hobby, but because I genuinely enjoy learning how complex systems fit together.
For a long time I thought these were separate interests.
Now I realize they’ve always been connected.
They’re all about understanding systems, exploring decisions, and seeing how consequences ripple outward.
From Security Analyst to Storyteller
I’ve spent more than twenty-five years working in cybersecurity, beginning as a security analyst and eventually serving as Chief Information Security Officer before moving into my current role as a Security Solutions Engineer.
One of the biggest lessons that career has taught me is that systems rarely fail because of technology alone.
They fail because people make decisions.
Good decisions.
Bad decisions.
Sometimes impossible decisions.
Every incident tells a story.
Every attack begins with a choice.
Every defense depends on someone seeing the bigger picture before it’s too late.
Once I recognized that, I started seeing the same patterns everywhere.
History.
Politics.
Business.
Tabletop games.
The best novels.
Different settings.
The same human questions.
The Worlds I’m Building
That’s why ToddHDow Studios is organized around four long-term creative worlds.
Each one represents something that has shaped my life for decades.
Cryptogeddon
This project is rooted in the career I’ve spent decades building.
I’ve watched cybersecurity evolve from antivirus software and firewalls into artificial intelligence, ransomware, nation-state operations, and increasingly fragile digital ecosystems that underpin nearly everything we do.
Somewhere along the way I stopped asking, “How do we defend against this?”
I started asking, “What happens if we don’t?”
Cryptogeddon is where those questions become fiction.
It’s grounded in the technology I’ve spent my career working with, but ultimately it’s a story about people trying to navigate a world that’s changing faster than they can understand it.
Holy Wars
Long before cybersecurity became my profession, I studied Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Toronto.
My honours thesis—The Just War Theory and the Argument for Peace—traced Christian thinking about warfare from the time of Christ to the modern era.
That research never really left me.
History isn’t simply a collection of dates and battles.
It’s a study of ideas.
Leadership.
Faith.
Power.
Ethics.
And the stories civilizations tell themselves to justify conflict.
Holy Wars is where I’ll continue exploring those questions.
Book of Dow
Every family carries stories.
Some are preserved in journals and photographs. Others survive only through fragments—old letters, fading gravestones, whispered family legends, and unanswered questions.
Book of Dow is my attempt to explore those stories.
Part genealogy, part historical research, and part storytelling, it’s a long-term project inspired by my family’s roots in early New England. Whether that journey ultimately becomes a work of family history, historical fiction, or something that ventures into the supernatural shadows of Salem remains to be seen.
What matters most is the search itself.
Because every family has a past.
Every place has its legends.
And sometimes the line between history and myth isn’t as clear as we’d like to believe.
Campaign Chronicles
I first rolled dice as a kid.
Like many people, life eventually pulled me away from Dungeons & Dragons.
Years later I found my way back, and today I enjoy the hobby even more than I did growing up.
I play around my own table, at friends’ homes, in local game stores, and online with players from around the world.
As a Dungeon Master I’m drawn to horror, suspense, impossible choices, and campaigns where actions have lasting consequences. Ravenloft, gothic horror, and stories where the world remembers what the players have done.
I’m also fascinated by how AI and modern technology are transforming tabletop gaming. From worldbuilding and encounter design to handouts, artwork, and campaign management, we’re living through one of the most exciting periods the hobby has ever seen.
Campaign Chronicles is where I’ll share that journey as both a Dungeon Master and someone building a business around helping others experience unforgettable games.
The Writer’s Notebook
Everything eventually comes back to writing.
This is where I’ll document the journey itself.
The victories.
The frustrations.
The lessons learned.
The books I’m reading.
The publishing decisions.
The creative breakthroughs.
The moments when everything seems impossible.
And, hopefully, the moments when it all comes together.
Because I suspect building these worlds will be every bit as interesting as eventually finishing them.
Looking Ahead
ToddHDow.com isn’t becoming something entirely different.
In many ways, it’s becoming what it was always meant to be.
A place where my professional experience, academic background, lifelong hobbies, and creative ambitions all come together under one roof.
Whether you’re here because of cybersecurity, speculative fiction, history, tabletop gaming, writing, or simply because you’re curious about how creative projects grow over time, I’m glad you stopped by.
My hope is that years from now someone can visit ToddHDow.com and discover something that sparks their own curiosity.
Maybe it’s a novel.
Maybe it’s a D&D campaign.
Maybe it’s a historical essay.
Maybe it’s an article about cybersecurity or artificial intelligence.
Different projects.
Different audiences.
One philosophy.
Worlds built on strategy, conflict & consequence.
Welcome to ToddHDow Studios.
When I first started blogging, I had already established my IT career. I had spent time working at AOL Canada as a web geek, I had worked in a couple of internal IT departments (at Celestica and Toronto Rehab Institute) and I had recently returned to the online space when I started working at Postmedia (then called Canwest) in early 2006. When I joined Postmedia, I was just wrapping up my undergrad degree from the University of Toronto (in Philosophy and Religious Studies) and I was beginning a masters degree (Master of Divinity) at McMaster University. I have since put my studies aside and continue to focus (and greatly enjoy!) on my IT career.
Tools? That’s it? Yes. Some are prettier than others. But at the end of the day, they are tools that we use to communicate. I’m writing this blog post on my wife’s Macbook Air. It’s my favourite writing instrument. It is lighter and faster than my aging Macbook Pro (which I fear may have finally died for good – it’s either got a failed hard drive or a failed logic board). Her Macbook Air has an SSD drive, it’s less than 3 lbs and it has 12 hours of battery life. Oooohhh… Aaaahh… Are you excited yet?
Nowadays, these things are commodity devices. Most of us just need a web browser. We keep in touch via webmail, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, . All of this could be done with a Chromebook. If you need MS Office or some other productivity tools, then a full blown laptop is still needed. But Apple has almost replaced laptops with tablets with their latest iteration of the iPad Pro.
The internet is this age’s Gutenberg. Anyone with a commodity device is equipped to reach the world. There has never been such a democratization of free speech in history. And I feel fortunate to be able to participate in this free speech.
Does this make me any smarter? Nope. If anything, it makes me feel more foolish for sharing my incomplete and/or inarticulate thoughts with others. But I have made some stronger relationships from my writing. And I have learned how to more clearly state my case as well.