(He thinks this shot makes him look epic. Please ignore unless you agree.)
About Dominic de Souza
With Brazilian-Portuguese background and German-Irish blood, Dominic was born in New Zealand, raised in Australia, studied in Fiji and France, and now lives in the USA. Dominic works as marketing director by day, and sidequests with content and storytelling.
I'm a marketing director by day and a novelist by every other hour I can steal. Brazilian-Portuguese background, German-Irish blood, born in New Zealand, raised in Australia, schooled in Fiji and France, and now somehow in America. Eldest of eight. My childhood was a crowded house at dusk — singing, arguing, plates in the sink, someone always yelling about something.
I was a feral kid. Salt air, tree bark, scraped knuckles, sticks swung like swords through hot Australian afternoons. I raided libraries like treasure vaults. At thirteen I finished my first novel, and when I typed The End, I didn't feel like I'd finished anything. I'd just started.
Never the same
I grew up inside a Catholic doomsday cult. Always next year's apocalypse, always the ever-war coming. I left it with a new wife, a kid on the way, very little money, and nowhere obvious to go.
So I rolled up my sleeves and learned to keep the lights on. Twenty-five years of marketing and design, three thousand-odd projects. I got good at it. I'm still good at it — it pays for everything else.
But I don't think I'd call it a career so much as a long detour with a lot of useful skills picked up along the way.
What I actually believe
Story is the most powerful experience humans have ever built. Sagas outlast strategies. The same handful of principles that build a brand will build a faith community, or a world, or a person.
And faith is the wildest frontier, not a cage. I think Catholic imagination has more creative freedom than anyone's using — not less. No preachy, market-shrinking, safe-for-the-parish fiction, thanks. Tolkien had the word for it: sub-creation. We make because God makes. That's not escapism. That's rolling up your sleeves and getting to work.
I celebrate the good, true, and beautiful wherever I find it, which means I forage — myth, science, world religions, history, mysticism. I'm a universalist. I read a lot of people I disagree with and I reserve the right to change my mind fast. I think that's the mark of a working brain, not a wobbly one.
The Catholic frontier
My mind is full of Faith, science, and history, and the seam where they meet. Genesis reads like a kaiju tore through it. Deep human origins mapped against actual timelines. A conscious, living universe where epigenetics and near-death experiences keep pointing at souls and angels and nobody in the room wants to say it out loud. Margaret Barker, Teilhard, Sheldrake, Hancock, Spitzer, Chesterton... I'm not credentialed in any of it. I'm just relentlessly curious and I've got a lot of bookmarks.
What I'm building
LegendFiction, started in the plague years when everyone else was waiting for it to pass — a community for storytellers who think fiction is vocation, not decoration. SagaBrand, the client work that sometimes buys more writing time. The novels, which I keep planning and will keep writing. And a Substack where I think out loud.
I have mostly mastered my ADHD, am an Enneagram 5, and a professional nerd. My deepest ambition is honestly pretty simple: help a lot of people find their freedom. Especially with their worlds. Then go meet those worlds.
Every project's an experiment. Most of what I write is a working theory. I'd like to build a future worth living in, and hand other people the tools and the banners so we can build it together.
Also I'll have coffee with anyone. That's not a bit — I mean it.
So. What are you working on?
Geeks over epics, mystics, science, the angelic, & movies.
INTERVIEW BIO
Dominic de Souza is a novelist, brand strategist, and community builder working at the frontier of faith, science, and history.
Born in New Zealand, raised in Australia, and schooled in Fiji and France, he was the eldest of eight in a loud, crowded, imaginative house. He finished his first novel at thirteen. In his twenties he walked away from the Catholic doomsday cult he'd been raised in, with a new wife, a child on the way, and no safety net — and spent the next twenty-five years building a career in marketing and design across more than three thousand projects.
In the pandemic years he founded LegendFiction, a community for writers and readers built on the conviction that stories are vocation, not decoration. He also runs SagaBrand, a brand and web studio, and serves as Director of Marketing for a national Catholic men's nonprofit.
He writes fantasy for children and young adults, hosts conversations with authors and thinkers, and publishes essays on Catholic spirituality, deep human history, and a universe he suspects is far more alive than we've been told. He is drawn to Margaret Barker, Chesterton, Teilhard de Chardin, Tolkien, and Sheldrake in roughly equal measure, and he celebrates the good, true, and beautiful wherever he finds it.
He's a self-described professional nerd, an Enneagram 5, and thoroughly ADHD. He believes the imagination is a frontier rather than a cage, that most people bury the child in them who thought he could build worlds, and that his job is to hand that child a match.
He lives in the United States with his family, and he'll have coffee with anyone.
Catholic spirituality
Being Catholic in the modern world, integrating the reconstruction of Christianity through hermetic and rewilded frontiers, and how to live authentic witness. I am universalist.
Pope Francis, Margaret Barker, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Peter Kreeft, Fr Richard Rohr, GK Chesterton, St Therese of Lisieux, St Thomas Aquinas, Valentin Tomberg, Fr Robert Spitzer, Michael Martin, Rudolf Steiner.
Ancient history
The origins of human history, from deep evolution through to the living myths of Genesis. Ancient culture and myth, and how they map against a scientific timelines. How God works with cultures to seed and inspire a positive contribution.
Jordan Petersen, Margaret Barker, Graham Hancock, Teilhard de Chardin, Rodney Stark, Rupert Sheldrake, Rudolf Steiner, Fr Robert Spitzer, Michael Martin
Modern science
Fascinated by the impact of a conscious, living universe and quantum physics, how epigenetics, Out of Body Experiences, and NDEs reveal souls and angels. Intrigued by the impact of technology on the human person, and how we can build a better future.
Jordan Petersen, Teilhard de Chardin, Rupert Sheldrake, Rudolf Steiner, St Thomas Aquinas, Fr Robert Spitzer, Ambrose Andreano, Robert Monroe
Myth & imagination
Understanding how to intuit and create meaningful stories and novels, dramatizing the greater truths that we struggle with so that others can begin to see. Myth and story are critical to the human experience, and how we share our love of deep truth.
JRR Tolkien, GK Chesterton, Stephen Lawhead, CS Lewis, Michael Crichton, JK Rowling, Lois McMaster Bujold, Brandon Sanderson, Lloyd Alexander, Brian Jacques, world myths.