Tad Williams

**Robert Paul "Tad" Williams** (born 14 March 1957 in San Jose, California) is an American writer. He is the international bestselling fantasy and science fiction author of the multivolume *Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn* series, *Otherland* series, and *Shadowmarch* series as well as the standalone novels *Tailchaser's Song*, *The War of the Flowers*, *Caliban's Hour*, and *Child of an Ancient City*. Most recently, Williams published *The Bobby Dollar* series. His short fiction and essays have been published in anthologies and collected in *Rite: Short Work* and *A Stark and Wormy Knight*. Cumulatively, over 17 million copies of Williams' works have been sold.

Williams’ work in comics includes a six issue mini-series for DC Comics called *The Next*. He also wrote *Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis* for DC starting with issue #50 and ending with issue #57. Other comic work includes *Mirrorworld: Rain* and *The Helmet of Fate: Ibis the Invincible #1* (DC).

Williams is collaborating on a series of young-adult books with his wife, Deborah Beale, called *The Ordinary Farm Adventures*. The first two books in the series are *The Dragons of Ordinary Farm* and *The Secrets of Ordinary Farm*. The third installment is currently being written. He also announced via his blog a new trilogy *The Last King of Osten Ard*, which is a sequel trilogy to his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series. It takes place 30 years after the original trilogy.

Source: Wikipedia.com

About Tad Williams:

*Tad Williams is a California-based fantasy superstar. His
genre-creating (and genre-busting) books have sold tens of millions
worldwide. His considerable output of epic fantasy and epic
science-fiction series, fantastical stories of all kinds, urban fantasy
novels, comics, scripts, etc., have strongly influenced a generation of
writers. Tad always has several secret projects on the go. 2016 will see
 the debut of a number of them; March 2017 brings ‘The Witchwood Crown’,
 the first volume in the long-awaited return to the world of the
‘Memory, Sorrow & Thorn’ novels. Tad and his family live in the
Santa Cruz mountains in a suitably strange and beautiful house.*

### "My Humble Beginnings

I’ve spent lots of my life in Palo Alto, the town that grew up around
 Stanford University. My parents never had much money—we were not on the
 wealthy side of town—but we never suffered (except existentially) and
were always encouraged, especially in our creativity.

(My mother was the main agent of this. She made up odd Pooh-bear-type
 songs about things we were doing, and improvised great Halloween
costumes—she made me a Viking suit one year with a wooden coat hanger
for the helmet-horns and a furry bathmat for the vest. Way cool.)

I didn’t go off to college the way all my friends (and family, for
that matter) did. I was more interested in living on my own and
supporting myself, so after high school I began the series of pretty
hideous jobs that has so tragically shaped my outlook on life. I stacked
 tiles, made tacos, sold shoes, peddled insurance, collected loans—not
all at the same time, of course, but you get the idea—and worked at
other things in my free moments.

These various projects included several years in a rock band, hosting
 a radio talk show, making commercial and uncommercial art, acting, and
other strange practices.

The band was called “Idiot”, and I still regret that we fell apart
just when we were all finally out of school and might have done
something. There was a lot of creativity there, a lot of talent—several
of the members are still professionally making music—but most of all,
there was no one else like us. We were our own weird animal. We used to
pretend to be other bands sometimes—Wheatstraw (a boogie band from
Nebraska), Xander Povar and His Soul Commandos, the Bay Cruisers (a Bay
City Rollers-type teen idol band)—and would perform appropriately before
 coming back for the encore as ourselves. We blew things up. We lit
things on fire. We wrote songs about bowling and voles and luxury camper
 vans and the end of the world. We were a little ahead of our time. It
was fun.

Always in the back of my mind, though, I was determined to do
something creative that would actually make me money so I could stop
doing horrible things for a paycheck. Ambition is like Tinkerbell—when
you stop believing, it dies. So I kept at my various projects, with
writing becoming a larger and larger focus. When I received the letter
from DAW that they were going to buy my novel *Tailchaser’s Song*,
 I was excited and relieved—somehow, the idea that my published books
might totally fail to sell never occurred to me that first day, although
 it was and always is a possibility.

I am deliriously grateful every day that I get to do what I want to
do for a living. Whenever the pressures of work and life start to make
me cranky, I just remind myself of managing the art store next to the
freeway (the owner was Basil Fawlty without Basil’s good qualities, i.e.
 wit) or being smacked with a $3.99 sale slipper by an irate Kinney’s
Shoes customer who refused to believe I didn’t know where the other half
 of the pair was, and I suddenly feel much better about everything.

Much better."

Source: Official Website