Howard Andrew Jones is an American
speculative fiction and
fantasy author and editor, known for The Chronicles of Hanuvar series, The Chronicles of Sword and Sand series and The Ring-Sworn trilogy. He has also written Pathfinder Tales, tie-in fiction novels in the world of the
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, published by
Paizo.[1][2] He is the editor of Tales from the Magician's Skull and has served as a Managing Editor at Black Gate since 2004.[3][4] He assembled and edited a series of eight volumes of the short fiction of
Harold Lamb for publication by
Bison Books.[5]
Biography
Jones was born in
Terre Haute, Indiana.[6] He has worked in the television industry as a cameraman and production assistant, as an editor of technical books, and as an English professor at the
University of Southern Indiana.[6] He lives on a small family farm in Indiana.[7]
Career
Jones first encountered the work of
Harold Lamb in high school and became a lifelong fan, which led, years later, to him collecting much of Lamb's short fiction work into an eight volume series for
Bison Books.[5] In an interview with
Black Gate, he recounts how many of the stories, which had been published in
pulp magazines, were gathered and bound for personal use by another fan, Dr.
John Drury Clark, whose widow sold the collection to Jones.[5] This collection included much of the works included in the collected volumes he later assembled and edited.[5]
Jones' debut historical fantasy novel The Desert of Souls, the first in The Chronicles of Sword and Sand series, also known as the Dabir & Asim stories after the two principal characters, was published in 2011 to critical acclaim and was included on Locus Magazine's 2011 Recommended Reading List for Best First Novel.[8][9][10] He has written numerous short fiction pieces set in the same world, many of which were collected in The Waters of Eternity. The sequel novel, The Bones of the Old Ones, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.[11][12] On the author's website, he states that the story "The Sword and the Djinn" is an excerpt from an unfinished third novel in the series entitled The Maiden's Eye.[13]
Jones has written four novels and several short fiction pieces set in Golarion, the world of the
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.[1][2] The cover art by
Tyler Jacobson for his Pathfinder Tales novel Beyond the Pool of Stars won the 2016
Chesley Award for Best Cover Illustration - Paperback Book.[14]
His second independent series, the epic fantasy Ring-Sworn trilogy, debuted in 2018 with the novel For the Killing of Kings and received critical acclaim, including a starred review from Publishers Weekly.[15][16] The concluding volume of the trilogy, When the Goddess Wakes also received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.[17]
In 2021, Jones was nominated for The
Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards - The Venarium Award for Emerging Scholar.[18]
In 2022, Jones signed a five book deal with
Baen Books to publish his Chronicles of Hanuvar series.[19] The first book in the series, Lord of a Shattered Land, is scheduled for release in August 2023, with the second book, The City of Marble and Blood, to follow in October 2023.
"Line of Blood", first published in Lords of Swords: Thirteen Stories of Heroic Fantasy, Pitch-Black Books, 2004
"The Ghost Pearl", first published in Ghost in the Cogs, Broken Eye Books, 2015
"Crypt of Stars", first published in Savage Scrolls, vol. 1,
Pulp Hero Press, 2020
"Whispers of the Serpent", first published in Scott Oden Presents The Lost Empire of Sol: A Shared World Anthology of Sword & Planet Tales, Rogue Blades Entertainment, 2021