Background

James Brennan was born on July 5, 1940, in Gilford, Northern Ireland. He is the son of grocers, James and Sarah Jane Brennan.

Education

James Brennan graduated from Portadown College. Also, he studied at the University of Exeter. He got a master's degree in Western esotericism in 2007. His Master's dissertation was on spirit communication.

Career

A prolific author of fiction and nonfiction, for children, young adults, and adults, James Brennan writes books that reflect his interest in psychology, mysticism, the occult, comparative religions, and quantum physics, among other subjects.

James developed a keen interest in psychology and started to study books on the subject. His research soon led him to other topics, such as hypnosis. He hypnotized his first subject, a school friend, at the age of nine. After college, he became a journalist, and by age twenty-four, he was the youngest newspaper editor in Ireland.

James Brennan worked as a magazine editor, a hypnotherapist, a counselor, and an advertising director, among other positions, while also working on his writing.

In his mid-twenties, James had published his first novel, brought out by Doubleday in New York. At the age of thirty, he decided to devote most of his time to writing, and since he has gone on to produce more than one hundred books, many of them international bestsellers.

He became a full-time writer in 1973. He has continued to explore psychical, psychological, and parapsychological subjects. James has also written romantic novels for adults, and he has contributed short fiction to women's magazines, science-fiction anthologies, and other periodicals.

His first book, Astral Doorways, is an exploration of out-of-body experience, became a specialist bestseller and a classic in its field.

James Brennan publishes work for adults under the name J.H. Brennan, while younger readers know him as Herbie Brennan. In 1995 he contributed two novels to the Horrorscopes series under the house pen name Maria Palmer. In 2003, Brennan published the children's book The Book of Wizardry: The Apprentice's Guide to the Secrets of the Wizards' Guild under the pseudonym Cornelius Rumstuckle.

James Brennan considered among the best contemporary writers of science fiction as well as and a pioneering writer of fantasy adventure gamebooks. Besides, he acknowledged for writing informational books on controversial subjects - magic, reincarnation, time travel, out-of-body experiences, the prophecies of sixteenth-century seer Nostradamus, the existence of Atlantis, and the possibility that the human race created by extraterrestrial beings. He backs up his provocative positions with well-researched documentation. James also has written books on such themes as death, the spiritual practices of Tibet, the unknown history of ancient Egypt, the history of prehistoric Ireland, and the techniques needed to achieve success. Several of his esoteric works regard as classics in their field. Although these works are not directly to young people, they have found their audience among young adults.

In his writing for younger readers, James Brennan characteristically blends fantasy and reality in humorous stories, some of which based on interactions between human children and supernatural creatures. In these works, he spoofs well-known genres, such as detective fiction, science fiction, and horror. James often underscores his work with serious subtexts such subjects as prejudice and the relationship between parents and children. For teenagers, he writes realistic and historical fiction, sometimes even combining the two. His nonfiction titles for younger readers focus on subjects. They can range from the evidence for human contact with aliens to how to succeed at school by using your mind, use the Internet, and how to be a spy. Also, James Brennan wrote two collections of stories featuring weird facts and Faerie Wars Chronicles, a series of fantasy novels, which adapted for audiobooks by Recorded Books.

Equally prolific in the adult market, James has a powerful reputation for challenging conventional assumptions with penetrating intelligence. His reappraisal of ancient history stirred lively debate on television and radio as well as in the Press. Occasionally he broadcasts and lectures throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland.

James Brennan fills his fiction and picture books with action, puns, wordplay, and humor, some of it scatological. As a stylist, he sometimes favors literary techniques, such as the creation of parallel plots and the use of alternating chapters with different narrative voices. Although some critics have noted that he occasionally writes thin texts for children and presents outrageous theories to adults, most observers acknowledge him as a leader in both science fiction and New Age writing. He is considered an author who combines fantasy, psychology, and science in a, particularly arresting manner. Besides, James has recognized as an inventive and enjoyable writer for young people.

Among James Brennan's work for younger children are a series of humorous stories about Eddie, a duck that witnesses a bank robbery, is kidnapped, and, after freeing himself, becomes a "ducktective" to bring criminals to justice.

Another story is Zartog's Remote. It describes how Zartog, an eight-year-old alien with several arms, disobeys his three parents and flies his spaceship to Earth, where he is stranded after he loses his remote control. With Frankenstella and the Video Shop Monster, James made his first contribution to the picture-book genre. In this work, little Stella warns her mother about the monster that she sees in the dark corners of the video store they are visiting.

His other book, Marcus Mustard, is a fantasy novel where the title character, a boy studying in a castle that feeds the monstrous, deadly, silk-spinning spiders whose appetite for human flesh can be staunched only by magic.

In two books, James Brennan transports readers to the world of Fairy Nuff. In Fairy Nuff: A Tale of Bluebell Wood the protagonist is left alone in the cottage on his first night, he blows up his home by trying to light a candle with a stick of dynamite on a barrel of gunpowder.

In Nuff Said: The New Bluebell Wood Adventure, Fairy Nuff throws an enormous garden party at a new castle he purchased with some of the money he received in his last outing. He invites the queen of England and the president of the United States, among other notables, builds a theme park, and gets the Chinese State Circus to entertain his guests. However, he does not plan on the presence of two uninvited guests: Widow Buhiss, who has escaped from the Tower, and her henchman Orc.

Inspired by the growing popularity of role-playing fantasy games during the mid-1980s, James Brennan wrote gamebooks in the Grail Quest and Sagas of the Demonspawn series. The popularity of these books led to additional gamebooks such as Egyptian Quest, which sends the reader on a journey through ancient Egypt to aid a pharaoh. Offering a variety of adventures, Egyptian Quest, is filled with plot twists surprise pitfalls and humor.

In addition to his career as a writer, James Brennan is a student and teacher of the mystical arts. He trained in Qabalah, an ancient system of mysticism, with the Society of the Inner Light, and Helios, the precursors of the Servants of the Light. The latter group runs a Mystery school, the Servants of the Light School of Occult Science, that has headed by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, an author and educator. Considered one of the most respected esoteric practitioners in the British Isles, Ashcroft-Nowicki collaborated with Brennan in his book The Magical Use of Thought Forms.

Today James Brennan works as a full-time author, and he gives lectures and seminars, which have included modules on reincarnation research, the astral plane, dreamwork, healing, spiritual development, psychical research, quantum physics, and magical training.

Achievements

• James Brennan is a well-known lecturer and author of more than one hundred fiction and journalistic works.
  
  At twenty-four, he became the youngest newspaper editor in his native Ireland.
  
  Sales of his books exceed 8 million copies. His works translated into about fifty languages, and he also wrote books on the Occult and New Age.
  
  The novel, Faerie Wars, rocketed to international success, achieving bestseller status in more than 20 overseas editions. This story was voted No 1 Top Ten Teenage Pick in the United States and listed as a New York Times Best Seller title. His gamebooks, Grail Quest series, became an international bestseller.

Works

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• book

  • Magical Use of Thought Forms

    (In this comprehensive reference manual, two leading occul...)

    2001
  • The Purple Emperor

    (Henry Atherton, his faerie prince friend Pyrgus, and Pyrg...)

    2004
  • Grail Quest: Voyage of Terror

    (The reader must face the gigantic Cyclops and the hammer-...)

    1985
  • Dracula's Castle

    (Into Castle Dracula, a forbidding fortress in the depths ...)

    1986
  • Death: The Great Mystery of Life

    (From the burial rites of the earliest humans to the curre...)

    2002
  • Marcus Mustard

    (Marcus Mustard is an apprentice in the caverns of Castle ...)

    1994
  • Tibetan Magic and Mysticism

    (A great esoteric tradition developed in the Himalayan sha...)

    2006
  • The Faeman Quest

    (In the exciting conclusion to Herbie Brennan's New York T...)

    2011
  • Grail Quest: The Castle of Darkness

    (The reader matches wits with the evil Wizard Ansalom in o...)

    1984
  • The Doomsday Box

    (When the Central Intelligence Agency created a program to...)

    2011
  • Occult Tibet

    ("Occult Tibet" presents this body of techniques, based pa...)

    2002
  • Seriously Weird True Stories

    (A collection of bizarre stories including unexplained tim...)

    1997
  • Ruler of the Realm

    (Queen Holly Blue is suspicious when Lord Hairstreak, lead...)

    2006
  • Faerie Lord

    (Two years after leaving the Faerie Realm, Henry Atherton ...)

    2007
  • Time Travel: A New Perspective

    (Scattered throughout the world are objects that could not...)

    1997
  • Demonspawn: Ancient Evil

    ("The Demonspawn" has been wiped out, but some of the land...)

    1985
  • The Little Book of Nostradamus

    (Complete prophecies for the New Millennium, from the grea...)

    1999
  • Magick for Beginners

    (If you want to learn real magic, you've got to get Magick...)

    1998
  • The Secret History of Ancient Egypt

    ("The Secret History of Ancient Egypt" is a fast-paced, br...)

    2000
  • How to Get Where You Want to Go

    (The book introduces the reader to the idea of getting whe...)

    1991
  • The Magical I Ching

    (It's one of the oldest books on Earth, and it has a messa...)

    2000
  • Whisperers: The Secret History of the Spirit World

    (In "Whisperers," bestselling novelist and expert on the o...)

    2014
  • Zartog's Remote

    (Zartog is a little alien with enormous eyes and no nose. ...)

    2000
  • The Gravediggers

    (One of the series based around the signs of the zodiac. A...)

    1996
  • Nuff Said: Another Tale of Bluebell Wood

    (Nothing in the life of Fairy Nuff is simple. After having...)

    2002
  • Faerie Wars

    (When Henry Atherton helps Mr. Fogarty clean up around his...)

    2003
  • The Shadow Project

    (Danny Lipman is a thief... until one night he robs the wr...)

    2010
  • Demonspawn: Fire Wolf 1984
  • Demonspawn: The Crypts of Terror 1984
  • Demonspawn: Demondoom 1985
  • Grail Quest: The Den of Dragons 1984
  • Grail Quest: Gateway of Doom 1984
  • Grail Quest: Kingdom Of Horror 1985
  • Grail Quest: Realm Of Chaos 1986
  • Grail Quest: Tomb of Nightmares 1986
  • Grail Quest: Legion of the Dead 1987
  • Egyptian Quest 1997
  • Astral Doorways 1971
  • Five Keys to Past Lives 1972
  • Experimental Magic 1972
  • Occult Reich 1974
  • An Occult History of the World 1976
  • Getting What You Want 1977
  • Good Con Guide 1978
  • Reincarnation 1981
  • A Guide to Megalithic Ireland 1982
  • Discover Your Past Lives: A Practical Course 1984
  • Mindreach 1985
  • The Reincarnation Workbook 1989
  • The Astral Projection Workbook 1989
  • Mindpower: Succeed at School 1990
  • Mindpower: Secrets to Improve Your Image 1990
  • Aquarian Guide to the New Age 1990
  • The Young Ghost Hunter's Guide 1990
  • Understanding Reincarnation 1990
  • Discover Astral Projection 1991
  • Discover Reincarnation 1992
  • True Ghost Stories 1993
  • The Dictionary of Mind, Body and Spirit 1994
  • Body Mind & Spirit 1994
  • Martian Genesis 1998
  • Barmy Jeffers and the Quasimodo Walk 1988
  • Return of Barmy Jeffers and the Quasimodo Walk 1988
  • Barmy Jeffers and the Shrinking Potion 1989
  • Beyond the Fourth Dimension 1975
  • Power Play 1977
  • Greythorn Woman 1979
  • Dark Moon 1980
  • The Curse of Frankenstein 1986
  • Monster Horrorshow 1987
  • The Crone 1989
  • Ordeal by Poison 1992
  • Ancient Spirit 1993
  • Capricorn: Capricorn's Children 1995
  • Black Death 1995
  • Blood brother 1997
  • Kookaburra Dreaming 1997

Views

James Brennan considers there is a massive amount of scientific and anecdotal evidence for parallel realities and the fact that they can be visited by ordinary people.

Quotations: "I discovered years ago, that I was addicted to writing much the same way, some people get addicted to drugs. Stephen King somewhere talks about the writing process as a window opening upon the page and the writer passing through it into a whole different world. I know that feeling very well: it's an escape from reality, and I love it. That's what gets me writing."

"I started writing for kids partly because I got interested in role-play gaming and partly because an American publisher told me I'd make lots of money. I kept doing it partly because I discovered I have a very childish mind - what amuses youngsters (bad puns, scatological references, and so on) amuses me as well - and partly because of the feedback. Children are the best critics in the world. They tell you when you're great, and they tell you when you're useless. A writer needs that to keep on his toes."

Membership

• 

  Society for Psychical Research , United Kingdom

Interests

• Esotericism, psychology, prehistory, history, philosophy, psychical research, movies, and television.

Connections

James Brennan married Helen McMaster on March 28, 1961. Their marriage lasted ten years before separation. In 1991 they formally divorced. They have two daughters, Aynia and Sian.

Then James married Jacquie Burgess in 1993.

Father:

James Brennan

Mother:

Sarah Jane Brennan

Wife:

Helen McMaster

James Brennan and Helen McMaster divorced in 1991.

Wife:

Jacquie Burgess

Jacquie Burgess is a therapist, herbalist, teacher, and healer with her own practice in Tullow, County Carlow in Ireland. She is the author of two successful books on crystal healing.

Daughter:

Aynia Brennan

Daughter:

Sian Brennan

Friend:

Eoin Colfer

Eoin Colfer is one of the world's favorite children's authors. He has written the internationally bestselling "Artemis Fowl" books.

Friend:

David Lee Stone

David Lee Stone debuted alongside his hero in the fantasy anthology, Knights of Madness, just after his 19th birthday. He is now a bestselling author of series fiction for children, teenagers, and young adults.

Friend:

O.R. Melling

O.R. Melling is an author of fantasy novels.

Friend:

Suzanne Mooney

Suzanne Mooney is an Irish artist currently living in Japan. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy from Tama Art University, Tokyo, and continues to work as an artist and educator in Tokyo.

colleague:

Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki is a British occult author, psychic, lecturer, and teacher of Western Mystery Traditions. She is the current Director of Studies of the "Servants of the Light," one of the United Kingdom's leading esoteric schools, founded by her late teacher Walter Ernest Butler in 1973.

References

• Herbie Brennan - official website
• Herbie Brennan (@herbiebrennan) - Twitter
• Herbie Brennan - Facebook