Downs grew up in Alberton, Gauteng, South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. In the year he turned six, he was enrolled in Alberton Primary School, where his mother was a Grade One teacher, and he ended up in her class. She instilled in him a love of reading and writing from a very early age, and by the end of his Grade One year, his reading level was a year above other children his age. Throughout Primary School, he participated in various reading competitions, and he graduated to public speaking and debating in High School. Immediately after leaving school, Downs got a job as a computer programmer. Throughout his adult life, however, he maintained his passion for reading and writing. After a long time of feeling too self-conscious to attempt it, he self-published his first short story, A Petition to Magic.
Works
''A Petition to Magic''
Downs' first work, A Petition to Magic was published in 2012 when he was 32 years old. It was first published as an epub formatted ebook on 23 December 2012, through the self-publishing site Smashwords, and it was later released as a paperback using the print-on-demand service Lulu and distributed to major book retailers worldwide. It is a short story, which centres around a wizard with a guilty secret, along with a young Queen and the way she is dealing with her new status. Tina Stanciu from Readers' Favorite described the book as reading more like a lesson than a short story, and it garnered a five-star review on that website. The story also garnered an 8.3 rating on the Reading is My Drug blog, where Samuel Alexander described it as "...a light, entertaining somewhat enjoyable read."
''Stingers''
Stingers were Downs' third story but was published second, in December 2013. It was included in the short story anthology, I am not Frazzle! And other stories for grown-ups. Stingers is about a boy called James Clarke, who suffers from bullying in school. On 16 June 2014, it was simultaneously released as an epub formatted ebook on Smashwords, and paperback and hardcover on Lulu.
''Heritage of Deceit''
While I am not Frazzle! was being prepared for release, Downs released his second story, Heritage of Deceit, on 1 December 2013. The first release of the book was as an epub formatted book on Smashwords. It was subsequently released as a paperback on Lulu on 23 January 2014, and as a hardcover on 28 March 2014. Heritage of Deceit is about a man working in an office, who thinks he has found evidence of a genocide that happened some time before. The MaineMuse reviewer described Heritage of Deceit as a "...delightful short read", wishing only that it could have been longer, so that she could have enjoyed it more.
