David Taliaferro Jr. was born in Los Angeles. He was raised by a large extended family full of opinionated and incredibly supportive personalities, and they remain very connected.
With cousins as virtual siblings, holiday dinners meant a house full of relatives. His family created the perfect conditions for thriving in situations with a lot of very different characters.
In high school he played football and basketball. For college, he attended the University of California at Irvine and majored in psychology, enthralled with the experience of exploring the pathologies of the human mind.
As a graduate student, he attended Pepperdine University in the Clinical Psychology Department and he worked as a staff-assistant at a residential rehabilitation center for people battling mental health issues. It was there he learned the value of compassion, genuineness and patience.
Receiving his Masters, he worked the graveyard shift at the Cedars-Sinai Rehabilitation Center and considered becoming an orthopedic surgeon.
While apprenticing under accomplished Resident surgeons, who made cutting into people to fix their ailments seem like an art form, he realized it wasn’t a job he wanted to spend another ten years in school to attain.
He has worked as a manager in government programs to help the homeless and for an entertainment talent agency as Head of Talent Relations. Those experiences taught him the value of collaboration and the joy of artistic expression. Pursuing those values led him to creative writing.
“Tobias Stone And The Prince Of The Nephilim” is his first novel.
