'Just telling a good story'

 

“I get up at an unholy hour in the morning my workday is completed by the time the sun rises. I have a slightly bad back which has made an enormous contribution to American literature.” –  David Eddings

 

Born in Spokane, Washington on this date in 1931, Eddings made that statement shortly before his death in 2009.  And the writings about which he spoke were several fantasy series’ mostly created in partnership with his wife Leigh.  

 Eddings grew up in the Puget Sound area and that rugged region became the setting for some of his early (and moderately successful) stories, like High Hunt, but it was in the Fantasy genre’ that he made his mark.   His call to the world of fantasy came from a doodled map he drew one morning over coffee - a doodle that became the geographical basis for a world he called Aloria.

 

A terrific chess player, too, Eddings took Leigh’s suggestion that he incorporate elements of chess into his books.  Combining that with the new world he imagined led to he and Leigh writing 5 best-selling series, starting in 1982.  Their last, The Dreamers, ended in in 2006 after she died following a series of strokes.   The Dreamers featured characters who could use their dreams to foresee visions of the future.  His tales often seemed prophetic but David pooh-poohed those who held him up as a visionary.

 

“I'm a storyteller, not a prophet,” he said.  “I'm just interested in telling a good story.”