William Horwood | |
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Born | Oxford, England | 12 May 1944
Pen name | James Conan |
Occupation | Novelist |
Nationality | English |
Period | 1980–present |
Genre | Fantasy, Children's Literature, Fiction |
Website | |
www |
William Horwood (born 12 May 1944 in Oxford) is an English novelist. He grew up on the East Kent coast, primarily in Deal, within a family fractious with "parental separation, secret illegitimacy, alcoholism and genteel poverty".
Between the ages of six and ten, he was raised in foster care, attended school in Germany for a year, then went on to Grammar School at age eleven. In his eighteenth year, he attended Bristol University to study geography, after which he had any number of jobs—fundraising and teaching, among others, as well as editing for the London Daily Mail.
In 1978, at age 34, he retired from the newspaper in order to pursue novel-writing as his primary career, inspired by some long-ago reading of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden .
His first novel, Duncton Wood , an allegorical tale about a community of moles, was published in 1980. It was followed by two sequels, forming The Duncton Chronicles, and also a second trilogy, The Book of Silence. William Horwood has also written two stand-alone novels intertwining the lives of humans and of eagles (The Stonor Eagles and Callanish), and The Wolves of Time duology. Skallagrigg, his 1987 novel about disability, love, and trust, was made into a BBC film in 1994. In addition, he has written a number of sequels to the 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.
Boy with No Shoes, published in August 2004, is a fictionalised memoir that explores challenging themes of childhood in Kent.
In 2007, he collaborated with historian Helen Rappaport to produce Dark Hearts of Chicago, a historical mystery and thriller set in nineteenth-century Chicago. It was re-published in 2008 as City of Dark Hearts with some significant revisions and cuts under the pen name James Conan.
After almost fifteen years, Horwood returned to his hallmark genre of fantasy, publishing the first novel in his Hyddenworld quartet in 2010. Each novel is thematically based on a season — the first is Hyddenworld: Spring, the next to be published was Hyddenworld: Awakening followed by Hyddenworld: Harvest and Hyddenworld: Winter and deals with the adventures of a cast of humans and 'hydden' ('little folk,' with some distinct fae overtones) on a quest to find gems holding the powers of the season for which each is named. "If they can be brought together they may combine to re-kindle the fires of a dying universe."
Winter's Heart is a fantasy novel by American author Robert Jordan, the ninth book of his series Wheel of Time. It was published by Tor Books and released on November 7, 2000. Upon its release, it immediately rose to the #1 position on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list, making it the second Wheel of Time book to reach the #1 position on that list. It remained on the list for the next two months. Winter's Heart consists of a prologue and 35 chapters.
The Wind in the Willows is a classic children's novel by the British novelist Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. It details the story of Mole, Ratty, and Badger as they try to help Mr. Toad, after he becomes obsessed with motorcars and gets into trouble. It also details short stories about them that are disconnected from the main narrative. The novel was based on bedtime stories Grahame told his son Alastair. It has been adapted numerous times for both stage and screen.
The Dark Tower is a series of eight novels, one novella, and a children's book written by American author Stephen King. Incorporating themes from multiple genres, including dark fantasy, science fantasy, horror, and Western, it describes a "gunslinger" and his quest toward a tower, the nature of which is both physical and metaphorical. The series, and its use of the Dark Tower, expands upon Stephen King's multiverse and in doing so, links together many of his other novels.
Karl Edward Wagner was an American writer, poet, editor, and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy, who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and originally trained as a psychiatrist. He wrote numerous dark fantasy and horror stories. As an editor, he created a three-volume set of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian fiction restored to its original form as written, and edited the long-running and genre-defining The Year's Best Horror Stories series for DAW Books. His Carcosa publishing company issued four volumes of the best stories by some of the major authors of the so-called Golden Age pulp magazines. He is possibly best known for his creation of a series of stories featuring the character Kane, the Mystic Swordsman.
John Dufresne is an American author of French Canadian descent born in Worcester, Massachusetts. He graduated from Worcester State College in 1970 and the University of Arkansas in 1984. He is a professor in the Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program of the English Department at Florida International University. In 2012, he won a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for his work.
Moyra Caldecott was a British author of historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction and non-fiction. Her works include Guardians of the Tall Stones and The Egyptian Sequence.
Charles Ray Willeford III was an American writer. An author of fiction, poetry, autobiography, and literary criticism. Willeford wrote a series of novels featuring hardboiled detective Hoke Moseley. Willeford published steadily from the 1940s on, but vaulted to wider attention with the first Hoke Moseley book, Miami Blues (1984), which is considered one of its era's most influential works of crime fiction. Film adaptations have been made of four of Willeford's novels: Cockfighter, Miami Blues, The Woman Chaser, and The Burnt Orange Heresy.
Duncton Wood is the first novel by English author William Horwood. It is the first of a six-volume fantasy series of the same name.
Dragoncharm is a fantasy novel written by Graham Edwards. The novel was first published in 1995 by Voyager Books (UK) and HarperPrism (US). It is the first book in the Ultimate Dragon Saga trilogy, and its sequels are Dragonstorm and Dragonflame.
Delirium Books, launched in the summer of 1999 by Shane Ryan Staley, was a horror publisher in the collector's market, producing low print-run limited editions intended for collectors and readers alike. Limited-edition books published by Delirium were reputed to sell out quickly, making their publications highly collectable. Delirium Books published The Rising, the first book in a series of zombie-themed horror novels written by Brian Keene, which won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel in 2003.
Greg F. Gifune is a horror author, the recipient of multiple Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominations in addition to one for the British Fantasy Award.
Steven R. Boyett, also known as DJ Steve Boyett, is a writer and disc jockey based in Northern California.
Ronald Kelly is best known as a speculative fiction and "southern-fried" horror writer. His tales are usually set in the Southern United States and feature language and actions that are associated with those regions.
The Well of the Unicorn is a fantasy novel by the American writer Fletcher Pratt. It was first published in 1948, under the pseudonym George U. Fletcher, in hardcover by William Sloane Associates. All later editions have appeared under the author's actual name with the exception of the facsimile reprint issued by Garland Publishing in 1975 for its Garland Library of Science Fiction series. The novel was first issued in paperback in 1967 by Lancer Books, which reprinted it in 1968; subsequent paperback editions were issued by Ballantine Books. The first Ballantine edition was in May 1976, and was reprinted three times, in 1979, 1980, and 1995. The most recent edition was a trade paperback in the Fantasy Masterworks series from Gollancz in 2001. The book has also been translated into German, and into Russian in 1992.
Graham Edwards is an English author of fantasy and crime novels. His most popular books have generally featured dragons as their central characters.
Helen F. Rappaport, is a British author and former actress. She specialises in the Victorian era and revolutionary Russia.
The Willows at Christmas is a children's novel by English writer William Horwood, first published in 1999. It is the fourth book of the Tales of the Willows series, a collection of four sequels to Kenneth Grahame's 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows.
"...and some were human." is the first story collection by science fiction writer Lester del Rey, originally published in hardcover by Prime Press in 1948 in an edition of 3,050 copies if which 50 were specially bound, slipcased and signed by the author. The stories first appeared in Astounding and Unknown. An abridged paperback edition, including only eight of the twelve stories, was issued by Ballantine Books in 1961. A Spanish translation, reportedly dropping only one story, appeared in 1957.
Gerald Alfred Butler was an English crime, thriller and pulp writer and screenwriter. He was born on July 31, 1907, in Crewe, Cheshire, and worked as a chemist prior to becoming a novelist. He later worked as the director of an advertising firm in London. He was sometimes referred to as the "English James M. Cain".
The Mask of the Sorcerer is a fantasy novel by American writer Darrell Schweitzer.