Graham Edwards (writer)
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
author of fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
and crime
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
novels. His most popular books have generally featured dragons as their central characters.
Born in Somerset
Somerset
The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...
and raised in Bournemouth
Bournemouth
Bournemouth is a large coastal resort town in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. According to the 2001 Census the town has a population of 163,444, making it the largest settlement in Dorset. It is also the largest settlement between Southampton and Plymouth...
, Edwards studied art and design. He went on to work as a graphic designer
Graphic designer
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...
and animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
before developing his writing career in the 1990s. An accomplished artist, he often includes illustrations with his novels. They can be viewed in the gallery section of his website. Edwards now lives in Nottingham
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
with his wife and two children.
Body of work
Edwards' major body of work consists of two related fantasy trilogies: the Ultimate Dragon Saga trilogy and the Stone trilogy (also known as the AmaraAmara
Amara, the sun beetles, are a large genus of carabid beetles, mostly holarctic, but a few species are neotropical or occurring in eastern Asia.These ground beetles are mostly black or bronze-coloured...
trilogy).
The former series of books is a fantasy work set in times before humans, and as such there are no human characters in the novels. The dragons are sentient and, much like the rabbits and moles in Richard Adams' Watership Down
Watership Down
Watership Down is a classic heroic fantasy novel, written by English author Richard Adams, about a small group of rabbits. Although the animals in the story live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language , proverbs, poetry, and mythology...
and William Horwood
William Horwood (novelist)
William Horwood is an English novelist. He grew up on the East Kent coast, primarily in Deal, within a model modern family—fractious with "parental separation, secret illegitimacy, alcoholism and genteel poverty"....
's Duncton Wood
Duncton Wood
Duncton Wood is the title of the first novel by author William Horwood, as well as a six-volume fantasy series to which it was later extended.- Overview :...
respectively, they are anthropomorphised, displaying a large array of human characteristics, relationships and emotions.
The latter series is set - although not in an actual Earthly time period - parallel to the late 19th century. Its events are triggered by the eruption of Krakatoa
Krakatoa
Krakatoa is a volcanic island made of a'a lava in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. The name is used for the island group, the main island , and the volcano as a whole. The island exploded in 1883, killing approximately 40,000 people, although some estimates...
in 1883, and feature human characters prominently, although the stories are also populated with other races such as dragons. This series can be read as a standalone trilogy, although minor plot and character connections to the Ultimate Dragon Saga mean that prior reading of the first trilogy will give a richer appreciation of the second.
Since finishing the Stone trilogy, Edwards has written several short stories, published in Realms Of Fantasy magazine. In 2008 he published his first crime novel, Runaway Minister, under the pseudonym Nick Curtis. It was published by Black Star Crime books.
The Ultimate Dragon Saga trilogy
- DragoncharmDragoncharmDragoncharm is a fantasy novel written by Graham Edwards. The novel was first published in 1995 by Voyager Books and HarperPrism . It is the first book in the Ultimate Dragon Saga trilogy, and its sequels are Dragonstorm and Dragonflame....
(1995) - DragonstormDragonstormDragonstorm is a fantasy novel written by Graham Edwards. The novel was first published in 1996 by Voyager Books and HarperPrism . It is the second book in the Ultimate Dragon Saga trilogy...
(1996) - DragonflameDragonflameDragonflame is a fantasy novel written by Graham Edwards. The novel was first published in 1997 by Voyager Books and HarperPrism . It is the final book in the Ultimate Dragon Saga trilogy...
(1997)
The Stone trilogy, or the Amara trilogy
- Stone and SkyStone and SkyStone and Sky is a fantasy novel written by Graham Edwards. The novel was first published in 1999 by Voyager Books and HarperPrism . It is the first book in the Stone trilogy, which also includes Stone and Sea and Stone and Sun...
(1999) - Stone and SeaStone and SeaStone and Sea is a fantasy novel written by Graham Edwards. The novel was first published in 2000 by Voyager Books and HarperPrism . It is the second book in the Stone trilogy, which also includes Stone and Sky and Stone and Sun...
(2000) - Stone and SunStone and SunStone and Sun is a fantasy novel written by Graham Edwards. The novel was first published in 2001 by Voyager Books and HarperPrism . It is the third book in the Stone trilogy, which also includes Stone and Sky and Stone and Sea...
(2001)
Short stories
- "The Wooden Baby" (in Realms of Fantasy magazine, April 2005)
- "Dead Wolf in a Hat" (in Realms of Fantasy magazine, October 2005)
- "Syren" (in Realms of Fantasy magazine, February 2007)
- "Still Point" (in Realms of Fantasy magazine, December 2007)
- "Girl in Pieces" (in Realms of Fantasy magazine, April 2008)
- "Riding the Drop" (in Jim Baen's UniverseJim Baen's UniverseJim Baen's Universe was a bimonthly online fantasy and science fiction magazine created by Jim Baen . It is recognized by the SFWA as a Qualifying Short Fiction Venue. JBU began soliciting materials in January 2006 and launched in June 2006...
, February 2009)
Further reading
- An excerpt from 2005 short story "The Wooden Baby"
- Interview with Graham Edwards (archive of Voyager Books page)
External links
- Official Website
- Loving Dragoncharm (fansite)
- Author profile on Voyager Online