Background

Robert Anthony Salvatore was born on January 20, 1959, in Leominster, Massachusetts, United States. He was the youngest of a family of seven.

Education

A graduate of Leominster High School, Robert Salvatore attended Fitchburg State College to study computer science, however, he changed his major to journalism after receiving a copy of The Lord of the Rings as a Christmas gift. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications from Fitchburg State College (now Fitchburg State University) in 1981, then returned to study for the degree he really wanted, the Bachelor of Arts in English earning it in 1989.

Career

It was in 1982 that Robert Salvatore became more serious about writing full-time and wanted to devote all his time to it. He wrote a manuscript called ‘Echoes of the Fourth Magic’, which he famously wrote in longhand by candlelight. After he finished the script for ‘Echoes of the Fourth Magic’, he decided to send the work for consideration to Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TSR), which is an American game publishing company, and to other publishers as well. Since TSR was looking for a new writer to write along the lines of ‘Forgotten Realms’, Salvatore was asked to audition for it. He cleared the audition and was hired to write a second book to ‘Forgotten Realms’ in 1987.

In 1988, Salvatore’s first novel was published by TSR - ‘The Crystal Shard’. It is a part of ‘The Icewind Dale Trilogy’ - the tale of the celebrated drow, Drizzt, the barbarian warrior, Wulfgar, the halfling Regis and a dwarf king. Other two books from ‘The Icewind Dale Trilogy’ are: ‘Streams of Silver (1988)’ and ‘The Halfling’s Gem (1989)’. ‘The Halfling’s Gem’ appeared in the New York Times Best Seller list in the same year that it released. In 1992, Salvatore’s ‘The Legacy’ was released; it was TSR’s first hardcover novel. The fantasy series included: ‘The Legacy (1992)’, ‘Starless Night (1993)’, ‘Siege of Darkness (1994)’, and ‘Passage to Dawn (1996).

TSR's board decided to hire a new author to write stories about ‘Drizzt’ after ‘Passage to Dawn’ came out in 1996 but Wizards of the Coast acquired TSR and they decided to retain Salvatore to write more stories about ‘Drizzt’. Salvatore began writing about ‘Drizzt’ and released the book ‘The Silent Blade’ in 1998. The book won the Origins Award in the same year and he went on to publish several series of books on ‘Drizzt’.

In 1999, Salvatore wrote the first installment of the New Jedi Order series set in the Star Wars universe, titled ‘Vector Prime’. The novel became a part of Star Wars Expanded Universe - includes officially licensed, a fictional background of the Star Wars universe, like books, video games, etc.

Besides books, Salvatore created the plot for the video game ‘Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone’ in 2004. He worked with the design team at Stormfront Studios and it was nominated for awards by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Salvatore got into collaboration with Larry Hama for Devil's Due Publishing’s comic book about a United States government anti-paranormal investigator called ‘Spooks’ in 2008. Hama created the military characters and storyline, and Salvatore came up with the monsters.

In 2010, Wizards of the Coast signed a new deal with Salvatore to write six more books focusing on Drizzt - a drow or a dark elf who kills off a country of malevolent enemies with his swordsmanship and valor. The books were released between 2011 and 2016.

Salvatore was hired as Creative Director for upstart game developer 38 Studios, which was owned by former baseball player Curt Schilling. He wrote the dialogue and created a backstory spanning ten thousand years for the fantasy game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which was released in February 2012 and sold over one million units. However, three months later 38 Studios declared bankruptcy and ceased operations. The company laid off its entire staff, including Salvatore, with the 2 million dollars fee for his services having never been paid. Salvatore claimed he harbored no ill will toward Schilling in a 2014 interview with The Escapist. "Why would I sue Curt [for the 2 million dollars]? Maybe he made a couple of bad Business decisions ... [but] he didn't do anything nefarious, and he got wiped out. He's lying in the gutter and you want me to kick him in the head? Why would anyone do that?"

Achievements

• Robert Salvatore's books regularly appear on The New York Times best-seller lists and have sold more than 30,000,000 copies. Salvatore’s original hardcover, The Two Swords, Book III of The Hunter’s Blade Trilogy (October 2004) debuted at # 1 on The Wall Street Journal best-seller list and at # 4 on The New York Times best-seller list. His books have been translated into numerous foreign languages including German, Italian, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Turkish, Croatian, Bulgarian, Yiddish, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Czech, and French.
  
  The R.A. Salvatore Collection has been established at his alma mater, Fitchburg State College in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, containing the writer's letters, manuscripts, and other professional papers.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Vector Prime

    (An exciting new era of Star Wars history is about to begi...)

    1999
  • The Pirate King

    (Drizzt returns to Luskan, and the Realms will never be th...)

    2008
  • The Legacy

    (A new mass market edition of the New York Times best-sell...)

    1992
  • The Spine of the World

    (Join the world's most famous drow elf in the penultimate ...)

    1999
  • The Halfling's Gem

    (Join Drizzt Do'Urden, the world's most famous drow elf, o...)

    1990
  • The Chaos Curse

    (The prequel series to The Ghost King comes to an explosiv...)

    1994
  • Streams of Silver

    (The epic tale of everyone's favorite dark elf, Drizzt Do'...)

    1989
  • Passage to Dawn

    (Revenge and Resurrection in a Frozen Wasteland! Drizzt an...)

    1996
  • The Ghost King

    (Don't miss the gripping conclusion to Salvatore's New Yor...)

    2009
  • Starless Night

    (Return to the City of Spiders! Still reeling from the dea...)

    1993
  • Canticle

    (A classic adventure from the creator of Drizzt! High in t...)

    1991
  • The Silent Blade

    (Can the Crystal Shard be destroyed at last? Drizzt is det...)

    1998
  • The Thousand Orcs

    (When a blood-thirsty banc of orcs led by an as-yet-unseen...)

    2002
  • Gauntlgrym

    (Drizzt joins Bruenor on his quest for the fabled dwarven ...)

    2010
  • Sea of Swords

    (The mighty warhammer Aegis-fang has found its way into th...)

    2001
  • Homeland

    (Drow ranger Drizzt Do’Urden, first introduced in The Icew...)

    1990
  • Neverwinter

    (With the last of his trusted companions having fallen, Dr...)

    2011
  • Siege of Darkness

    (Gods Walk the Realms! Rising up from the black depths of ...)

    1994
  • Exile

    (As I became a creature of the empty tunnels, survival bec...)

    1990
  • The Two Swords

    (Mithral Hall is under siege, Nesmé is overrun, and even p...)

    2004
  • Sojourn

    (Now in paperback, the third installment in the classic ta...)

    1991
  • The Last Threshold

    (Drizzt Do’Urden navigates a winding path littered with se...)

    2013
  • The Crystal Shard

    (Drizzt Do’Urden has settled in the windswept towns of Ice...)

    1988
  • Charon's Claw

    (Drizzt draws his swords once more to aid his friends. His...)

    2012
  • The Orc King

    (Drizzt is back in this exciting new trilogy from R.A. Sal...)

    2007
  • Star Wars: Episode II - Attack Of The Clones

    (There is great disturbance in the Force. Mischievous and ...)

    2002
  • In Sylvan Shadows

    (Enter the Forest of Shadows. In Sylvan Shadows follows Ca...)

    1992
  • The Lone Drow

    (Alone on the battlefield. Surrounded by death. Cornered b...)

    2003
  • Night Masks

    (R.A. Salvatore's The Cleric Quintet tells the tale of the...)

    1992
  • The Fallen Fortress

    (R.A. Salvatore's The Cleric Quintet tells the tale of the...)

    1993

Views

Quotations: "But love, honest love, requires empathy. It is a sharing - of joy, of pain, of laughter, and of tears. Honest love makes one’s soul a reflection of the partner’s moods. And as a room seems larger when it is lined with mirrors, so do the joys become amplified. And as the individual items within the mirrored room seem less acute, so does pain diminish and fade, stretched thin by the sharing. That is the beauty of love, whether in passion or friendship. A sharing that multiplies the joys and thins the pains."

"I don't have to prove my worth and value to any but those I love, and that I do by being who I am, with confidence that those I love appreciate the good and accept the bad. Does anything else really matter?"

"Nostalgia is a necessary thing, I believe, and a way for all of us to find peace in that which we have accomplished, or even failed to accomplish. At the same time, if nostalgia precipitates actions to return to that fabled, rosy-painted time, particularly in one who believes his life to be a failure, then it is an empty thing, doomed to produce nothing but frustration and an even greater sense of failure."

"Change is not always growth, but growth is often rooted in change."

"We are all prisoners at one time or another in our lives, prisoners to ourselves or to the expectations of those around us. It is a burden that all people endure, that all people despise, and that few people ever learn to escape."

"Definitely they write themselves. It's an amazing experience. It's like the characters have come alive and are sitting on my shoulder talking to me, telling me their tales."

"Because in fantasy perhaps more than in any other genre, the character is rewarded for making the right choices and punished for making the bad. Ask Boromir."

Membership

Salvatore is an active member of his community and is on the board of trustees at the local library in Leominster, Massachusetts. He has participated in several American Library Association regional conferences, giving talks on themes including "Adventure fantasy" and "Why young adults read fantasy."

Personality

When he isn't writing, Salvatore chases after his three Japanese Chins, takes long walks, hits the gym, and coaches/plays on a fun-league softball team that includes most of his family. His gaming group still meets on Sundays to play.

Interests

• music

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Jean-Paul Sartre

• Writers

  James Joyce, Mark Twain, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Dante Alighieri, Ian Fleming, Arthur Conan Doyle, Fritz Leiber, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

• Sport & Clubs

  softball, hockey

• Music & Bands

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Connections

Robert Salvatore is a native of Massachusetts and resides there with his wife Diane, and their three children, Bryan, Geno, and Caitlin.

Wife:

Diane Salvatore

Son:

Bryan Salvatore

Son:

Geno Salvatore

Daughter:

Caitlin Salvatore

co-author:

Larry Hama

Acquaintance:

George Lucas

colleague:

Ed Greenwood

colleague:

Curt Schilling

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166 This volume of Contemporary Authors contains biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.
  1998
• St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers A complete title index provides fast and easy access to the user's entry of interest. Also look for an appendix of foreign-language writers, notes on advisors and contributors and a comprehensive reading list for fantasy enthusiasts.
  1995
• The Encyclopedia of Fantasy
  1999
• Magill's Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature This guide contains entries on a wide range of science fiction and fantasy literature. It should be a valuable collection development tool and useful for school, public and academic libraries.
  1996
• Designers & Dragons
  2011