David Lee Stone was born in Kent on 25th January, 1978, son of Barbara Ann Stone & Henry ‘Harry’ Cooke. His father left soon afterwards, and he was raised in Thanet by his mother and grandmother.

In 1982, David attended Holy Trinity Primary School in Ramsgate, and quickly became interested in creative writing. His reports in this subject were impressive and, in 1988, aged 10, he won three awards at the Methodist-run Dover Festival of Literature.

Although David’s experience of primary school was a good one, he didn’t take to his secondary school so well, and began to feign illness in an attempt to evade it altogether. At this time, David had begun to compile characters and situations that would eventually form the basis for the Illmoor Chronicles.

He had also discovered two major passions: comedy and fantasy role-playing games. Any time not spent writing was devoted to playing Advanced Heroquest and watching comedians like Dave Allen, Billy Connolly, the Monty Python Team and Blackadder. He also began to read voraciously, citing the likes of Davidson, Leiber, Pratchett, Sharpe and Adams among his favourites.

David left school in 1994, and had a number of jobs while he developed his writing. His stories and/or review columns began to appear in countless small-press magazines and anthologies, including Interzone, SFX, Games Workshop’s Citadel Journal and Peter Haining’s Knights of Madness, where David appeared alongside the likes of Peake, Pratchett and Sharpe.

In 1999, he was taken on as a client by the Ed Victor Agency. By this time, he had written two novels set in the fictional land of Illmoor he’d first created at the age of 10.

But money was a problem, and David had to supplement his insubstantial income from writing. From 1994-1996, he worked as a junior negotiator as his mother’s estate agency. After this, he returned to college, studying English and Psychology, but the constant lack of money lured him back to the job centre.

In 1999, David started work as a customer services representative at a local Blockbuster Video superstore, rising to the rank of Assistant Superstore Manager before his big break in the publishing world enabled him to write full-time.

In April, 2002, the first three volumes of the Illmoor Chronicles were sold to Hodder Headline Ltd, in a six-figure publishing deal. This was followed by an astonishing $500,000 deal with Disney Hyperion in the USA, and the series went on to sell in Australia, Italy, Japan, Russia, Brazil and Norway.

The first volume of the Illmoor Chronicles sold over 20,000 copies in hardback, and the paperback is due out in January, 2004. The second volume of the Illmoor Chronicles in scheduled to appear next June.

David lives in Kent with his family and two German shepherd dogs. He and his girlfriend of two years, Chiara, are currently hunting for their first home.

Last updated September 2003