Howard Andrew Jones (July 19, 1968 – January 16, 2025) was 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 had also written Pathfinder Tales, tie-in fiction novels in the world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, published by Paizo.[1][2] He was the editor of Tales from the Magician's Skull and had 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]
Background
Jones was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, July 19, 1968.[6][7] He 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 lived on a small family farm in Indiana.[8]
Jones was diagnosed with brain cancer in September 2024, and died on January 16, 2025, at the age of 56.[9]
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.[10][11][12] 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.[13][14] 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.[15]
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.[16]
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.[17][18] The concluding volume of the trilogy, When the Goddess Wakes also received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.[19]
In 2021, Jones was nominated for The Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards - The Venarium Award for Emerging Scholar.[20]
In 2022, Jones signed a five book deal with Baen Books to publish his Chronicles of Hanuvar series.[21] 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
