Lawrence Watt-Evans (born 1954) is one of the two pseudonyms of American fantasy author Lawrence Watt Evans (his other pseudonym, used primarily for science fiction, is Nathan Archer). Born in eastern Massachusetts as the fourth of six children, he made his first attempts at professional writing when he was eight.

After graduating from Bedford High School in Bedford, MA, he attended Princeton University but left without a degree. He began to seriously try to sell his writing during a break in his college career, but sold nothing significant until he produced The Lure of the Basilisk in 1978 (published 1980) and thereupon began writing full time. He initially marketed his work under other names; it was the editor of his first novel, Lester Del Rey, who first demanded he use his real name and then created the pseudonym Lawrence Watt-Evans. Evans had insisted on including his middle name to avoid confusion with a contemporary non-fiction writer also named Lawrence Evans, and del Rey had then added the hyphen "to make it more distinctive," thereby relegating Watt-Evans to the bottom shelves in alphabetically-arranged bookstores.

Watt-Evans was president of the Horror Writers of America from 1994 to 1996, and has also served as Eastern Regional Director and treasurer of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. From 1995 to 1997, he was half of a partnership known as Malicious Press (with screenwriter Terry Rossio), which published Deathrealm magazine, edited by Stephen Mark Rainey.

In April of 2005 Watt-Evans announced that the first draft of his latest novel, The Spriggan Mirror, would be made available online on a chapter-by-chapter basis, using a modified version of the Street Performer Protocol. The draft has since been finished and was previously available in its entirety on Watt-Evans' website. However, it is now slated for publication, so the free version has been removed.

Works

The Lords of Dûs series:

• The Lure of the Basilisk (1980)
• The Seven Altars of Dûsarra (1981)
• The Sword of Bheleu (1982)
• The Book of Silence (1984)

The Worlds of Shadow series:

• Out of This World (1993)
• In the Empire of Shadow
• The Reign of the Brown Magician (1996)

The Obsidian Chronicles:

• Dragon Weather (1999)
• The Dragon Society
• Dragon Venom

The Legends of Ethshar series:

• The Misenchanted Sword (1985)
• With a Single Spell (1987)
• The Unwilling Warlord (1989)
• The Blood of a Dragon (1991)
• Taking Flight (1993)
• The Spell of the Black Dagger (1993)
• Night of Madness (2000)
• Ithanalin's Restoration (2002)
• The Spriggan Mirror (Completed draft posted on the web 2005)

The War Surplus series:

• The Cyborg and the Sorcerers (1982)
• The Wizard and the War Machine (1987)

The Annals of the Chosen trilogy:

• The Wizard Lord (2006)
• Winterhome (forthcoming)
• The Summer Palace (in progress)

Star Trek novels:

• Voyager: Ragnarok (as Nathan Archer)
• Deep Space Nine: Valhalla (as Nathan Archer)

And one horror novel:

• The Nightmare People

Other science fiction novels:

• The Chromosomal Code (1984)
• Shining Steel (1986)
• Denner's Wreck (1988)
• Nightside City (1989)
• Spiderman: Goblin Moon (as Nathan Archer, with Kurt Busiek)
• Mars Attacks: Martian Deathtrap (as Nathan Archer)

Other fantasy novels:

• The Rebirth of Wonder (1992)
• Split Heirs (in collaboration with Esther Friesner)
• Touched by the Gods (1997)

Short story collections:

• Crosstime Traffic
• Celestial Debris

Anthologies edited:

• Newer York (1991)

He has also written more than a hundred short stories including "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers," which won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1988.

External links

• Author's home page: The Misenchanted Page
• The Ethshar Home Page
• The Spriggan Experiment (web serialization of The Spriggan Mirror)
• Short interview at Geek World
• December 1997 Interview at Writers Write, mainly about the writing process of Touched By the Gods
• July 1998 interview at Critters

American fantasy writers | American science fiction writers | Hugo Award winning authors | 1954 births | Living people

Lawrence Watt-Evans