Byron Osing

Byron Osing likes to say he was “raised picking rocks and shoveling grain” on a dryland grain farm near Milk River, Alberta. Just a short step north of the Montana border—and everything since has been a bit easier on the lower back.

Like most kids growing up on the frozen Canadian prairies, he dreamed of becoming a hockey star. Unlike most, he chose to stand in front of flying pucks as a goaltender… a natural choice for a self described “former fat kid.” The aspiration to go pro didn’t quite pan out, but it did gain him a university hockey scholarship and a Psychology degree from the University of Lethbridge.

After realizing there were only about a handful of sports psychology jobs in the country if he continued on to his specialized MA degree in that field (and he might not land one), Byron pivoted—hard—into business school, collecting an MBA and eventually a Ph.D. from the University of Calgary. Along that path, he also met his future wife and lifelong partner, Betty, quite literally by catching her mid-fall in a nightclub… which either says a great deal about fate and destiny, or her balance in high heels on stairwells.

From there, Byron spent over two decades in the technology world, co-founding and running various public and private companies, navigating the unpredictable rollercoaster of entrepreneurship.

These days, he’s retired from the corporate battlefield and focuses on more important challenges, like unsuccessfully lowering his golf handicap while his wife steadily improves. They also share a long-standing passion for canines, which once escalated for many years into selectively breeding and showing champions across North America, which now mostly involves spoiling them at home.

Byron’s “overnight realization” as a fiction author came only after decades of education, business stress, and one particularly memorable hospital stay. A 'cheek to cheek' slow dance with the Grim Reaper, that on All Hallows Eve itself, while watching 'little monsters' in costumes visiting the hospital, sparked an idea: Where did all the monsters of legend actually come from? That question, and the answers to it, drove his first novel—which rapidly evolved into the eleven book series The Absolution of Salem.

Turns out, the farm kid who didn’t become a hockey star still ended up telling some pretty good stories after all.