Lawrence Watt-Evans (born 1954) is one of the pseudonyms of American science fiction and fantasy author Lawrence Watt Evans (another pseudonym, used primarily for science fiction, is Nathan Archer). Born in Arlington 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. By the rules of Princeton, he could not re-apply for a year, and he resolved to use it to become a writer & began to seriously try to sell his writing, but sold nothing significant until he produced The Lure of the Basilisk in 1978 (published 1980) and thereupon began writing full time. Despite having sold a short story and several articles under his real name, he initially submitted his first novel under a pseudonym; it was the editor of that novel, Lester Del Rey, who first demanded he use his real name and then added the hyphen to create the name 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" .

Watt-Evans was president of the Horror Writers Association 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 and he is currently the managing editor of the webzine Helix SF.

In April 2005 Watt-Evans announced that the first draft of his latest Ethshar 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 one of Watt-Evans' websites. However, a revised version has now been published commercially in both electronic and paper editions, so the free version has been removed. In September 2006, he announced that he had begun work on another, The Vondish Ambassador, which was completed in 2007.

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 (1995)
• The Reign of the Brown Magician (1996)

The Obsidian Chronicles:

• Dragon Weather (1999)
• The Dragon Society (2001)
• Dragon Venom (2003)

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 (2006)
• The Vondish Ambassador (2007)

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)
• The Ninth Talisman (2007)
• The Summer Palace (2008)

Star Trek novels:

• Voyager: Ragnarok (as Nathan Archer) (1995)
• Deep Space Nine: Valhalla (as Nathan Archer) (1995)

And one horror novel:

• The Nightmare People (1990)

Other science fiction novels:

• The Chromosomal Code (1984)
• Shining Steel (1986)
• Denner's Wreck (1988)
• Nightside City (1989)
• The Spartacus File (in collaboration with Carl Parlagreco) (2005)
• Spider-Man: Goblin Moon (as Nathan Archer, with Kurt Busiek) (1999)
• Mars Attacks: Martian Deathtrap (as Nathan Archer) (1996)
• Predator:
  • Cold War (as Nathan Archer) (1997)
  • Concrete Jungle (as Nathan Archer) (1995)

Other fantasy novels:

• The Rebirth of Wonder (1992)
• Split Heirs (in collaboration with Esther Friesner) (1993)
• Touched by the Gods (1997)

Short story collections:

• Crosstime Traffic (short story collection) (1992)
• Celestial Debris (2002)

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 Mirror (web serialization of The Spriggan Mirror)
• The Vondish Ambassador Serialization
• 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
• Helix SF

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