About me...
Thought by some to be an incarnation of one of the Great Old Ones, the being now commonly known as Ed Greenwood fell to earth in the heart of a shooting star on the Night of the Unicorn Moon. Overnight. he grew to bearded manliness, becoming by the end of that month the Canadian fencing-with-saxophones champion and a doctor of strange games played while wearing fishnets, before embarking on potty training (largely completed now), belly dancing training (belly attained, but Ed is still working on the dancing) and the road to greatness that he still hasn’t found the first milepost on (perhaps he missed it among all the Yield and Stop signs).
Admired by many for the inspired lunacy of his school projects, he—
Oh. Sorry. The REAL version. Uh-huh.
—Boring bragging commences . . .
Ed Greenwood is an award-winning Canadian writer and game designer. Although most Canadians don’t know his name, he has been in the top ten (usually top five) writers of bestselling Canadian fiction writers almost every year of the last two decades.
Ed created the Forgotten Realms® fantasy world for the Dungeons and Dragons game; it has been featured in board, roleplaying, computer and card games, comic books, and a bestselling novel line that has spanned twenty years and hundreds of titles by more than sixty writers, including R.A. Salvatore’s famous Drizzt novels. Ed is currently Canada’s only judge for the prestigious World Fantasy Awards, and has published over 170 books that have sold millions of copies worldwide in over a dozen languages. He has written three novels already this year, and by the time they are all published this fall, he will have written at least the first drafts of three more. Ed usually writes fantasy, but has also written science fiction, horror, romance, mysteries, song lyrics, poetry, and many, many magazine articles and columns. He even appeared (as himself) in comic books published by DC Comics and by TSR, Inc. Ed’s novels regularly climb the New York Times and other major best-seller lists; his 1987 novel Spellfire has sold over three million copies worldwide in various editions, and the Waldenbooks bookstore chain reported that his novel Crown of Fire was its top-selling game-related publication of 1994. His writing has won many awards down the years, and he was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design’s Origins Awards Hall of Fame in 2003. Ed has been a guest of honor at more than four dozen conventions all over the world, from Stockholm, Sweden to Melbourne, Australia.
In real life, Ed Greenwood is a large, well-padded, bearded man who is all too often mistaken for Santa Claus. He has worked in public libraries for forty years, and lives in an old farmhouse with more than 80,000 books. When he was younger, he loved exploring caves, fencing with swords, and camping. These days, he much prefers a well-padded fireside armchair where he can curl up and read books about exploring caves, fencing with swords, and camping. Or books about crazies in armor who ride dragons, hurl spells, and seek princesses in castles. Ed has lived for more than a decade in rural Ontario, but was born and raised in Don Mills, now part of Toronto. He comes from a literary family; his mother, Barbara Greenwood, is the author of several popular Canadian children’s books, including A Pioneer Story, A Question of Loyalty, and The Kids Book of Canada. Ed’s parents together wrote Stand Up! Speak Out! (a book on public speaking for novices), and his uncle W. G. Hardy was a major figure in Canadian literature decades ago, writing such bestsellers as The Unfulfilled, City of Libertines, The Scarlet Mantle, The Bloody Toga, and Alberta: A Bicentennial History.
Ed has been an editor of Dragon Magazine and a columnist for The Campaign Hack (Canada’s longest-running gaming magazine), the media magazine Realms, Polyhedron™ Newszine, Cryptych, and several other fantasy and gaming periodicals. Ed is a charter lifetime member of the RPGA (Role Playing Game Association) and a lifetime active member of SFWA (the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America). Ed has been hailed as “the Canadian author of the great American novel” (bestselling fantasy author J. Robert King), “an industry legend” (Dragon Magazine), “one of the greats” (Games Magazine), and “a true genius” (bestselling SF and fantasy author Elaine Cunningham). Bestselling fantasy author Margaret Weis said of him: “Ed Greenwood is a master of fantasy adventure worldbuilding. His magic and wizardry are wondrous to all!”
Bestselling SF and fantasy author and game designer Michael Stackpole said this of Ed: “Creating fantasy requires imagination and a deft but subtle hand, which Ed Greenwood has long showed himself capable of in his creation of the Forgotten Realms world. His skill lies in his ability to make the ordinary magical and in integrating magic and legends so thoroughly in his work. His sense of humor and drama combine in wondrous adventure tales with depth and pacing that make his books single-sitting treasures.”
Computer game enthusiasts will find Ed’s short story “Moonrise over Myth Drannor” in the Myth Drannor Forgotten Realms computer game from Strategic Simulations, Inc., and his short story “Living Forever” in the Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor computer game from Ubisoft. Ed was one of the writers of the classic Interplay computer game The Two Towers, based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Ed’s lore has been used in over two dozen computer games, including the best-selling Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights series. Ed cocreated the Mornmist fantasy world (published by Vision Books) with noted fantasy author Lynn Abbey, and is developing more fantasy settings, as well as assisting in the preparation of an on-again-off-again Forgotten Realms television series and movie. Ed has contributed literally hundreds of articles and short stories to dozens of magazines, including Dragon, Dungeon Adventures, Gameplay, Troll, Games Unplugged, Realms, Game Trade, Amberzine, and The Excellent Prismatic Spray. He has written forewords for several books, including the Planet Stories/Paizo Publishing reprint of Gary Gygax’s The Samarkand Solution (2008).
Ed also contributes weekly articles to the Wizards of the Coast site (www.wizards.com). These include the long-running and now completed Realmswatch, Ed Says, Elminster Speaks, Realmslore, Waterdeep News, and Border Kingdoms columns, the current Eye On The Realms column, and Realms short stories such as “Never a Warpig Born” (2001); “One Comes, Unheralded, To Zirta” (2001); “Wisdom Comes to the Maimed Wizard” (2002); “Ladies Night at the Yawning Portal” (2002); “Only a Woman Can Take This Sort of Abuse” (2003); “The Night Tymora Sneezed” (2004); “The Silverfall Interview” (2005); “A Ghost Of a Chance” (2005); “Far Too Many Thieves” (2005); “Dark Times in Hastarl” (2005); “Revenge among Thieves” (2005); “The Lady of the Mists” (2005); “Every Revel a Masterpiece” (2006); “The Weaver of Dreams” (2007); “Volo Breaks a Hot Tale” (2008); “Night of the Dread Pudding” (2009); “The Rise of Bardic Beauty” (2010). In 2005, the Wizards of the Coast Legendology website published Ed’s novelette Oroon Rising in serialized form.
Via one of his players, Ed regularly answers fan questions in the “Chamber of Sages” Candlekeep forums at forum.candlekeep.com. Those wanting to hang out with Ed, hear his latest news, and buy new fiction by him should head to TheEdVerse.com.
-Ed Greenwood, Dec 2013
