Dennis L. Mckiernan was born April 4, 1932, in Moberly, Missouri,where he lived until age eighteen, when he joined the U.S. Air Force, serving four years spanning the Korean War. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Missouri in 1958 and an M.S. in the same field from Duke University in 1964. Dennis spent thirty-one years as one of AT&T Bell Laboratories whiz kids in research and development - in anti-ballistic missile defense systems, in software for telephone systems, and in various management think-tank activities - before changing careers to be a full-time writer.
Currently living in Tuscon, Arizona, Dennis began writing novels in 1977 while recuperating from a close encounter of the crunch kind with a 1967 red and black Plymouth Fury (Dennis lost: it ran over him: Plymouth 1, Dennis 0).
Among other hobbies, Dennis enjoys SCUBA diving, dirt-bike riding, and motorcycle touring - all enthusiasms shared by his wife. An internationally bestselling author, his critically acclaimed fantasy novels include Voyage of the Fox Rider, The Eye of the Hunter, Dragondoom, The Silver Call Duology, The Iron Tower Trilogy, and now the story collection Tales of Mithgar. Never one to sit idle too long, Dennis has also written The Vulgmaster (a graphic novel) and several short stories and novelettes which have appeared in various anthologies. He is presently working on his next opus.

From Into the Fire...

I was born April 4, 1932, in Moberly, Missouri, in the depths of the Great Depression. My dad and mom were factory workers, struggling to make ends meet. Yet my brother and sister and I didn't feel any neglect, for both of our parents loved to read and to read aloud, and both loved to play many games. And they included us in these pastimes.
When I was nine, may dad gave me a pulp magazine: it featured Captain Future, the quintessential science fiction pulp hero; I devoured the tale. This magazine more than anything else launched me into omnivorous reading: science fiction, fantasy, fairy tales, Oz books, and whatever else I could lay my hands on: westerns, mysteries, romances, the classics, and more: I read them all, and all was triggered by a magazine my dad gave me back when I was but nine.
Thank you, Mom; I really appreciate what you did. And thank you as well, Dad, wherever you are in that great beyond; that magazine you gave me when I was nine was a priceless gift. Thank you, Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett, as well as a myriad others; you helped launch me into my engineering career, and the literary career which followed. Thank you, too, Captain Future . . . and Grag and Otho and the Brain, and Eek and Oog and all the others who helped that remarkable man. Without all of you and the Comet flying across vast reaches of space and doing in evil throughout the whole universe, perhaps this biography at the end of this book would never have been. . . . It is all connected, you know.

(D. L. McKiernan has also recently written Caverns of Socrates, a SF/Fantasy novel)