Roger's Exciting Life Story
Here's a quick version of my biography, done in the time-honored third-person style of all dust-jacket bios:
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Roger MacBride Allen is the author of seventeen science fiction novels -- sixteen published and one forthcoming. Among his most recent works are a triology of Star Wars Novels -- Ambush at Corellia, Assault at Selonia, and Showdown at Centerpoint, and a triology of Asimovian Robot novels -- Caliban, Inferno, and Utopia. Two of his most popular stand-alone novels are The Ring of Charon and The Shattered Sphere. His latest book is The Game of Worlds a young adult novel for Avon's new Out of Time series. He has completed the first volume of a new trilogy for Bantam Books, entitled The Depths of TIme, which will be published in March, 2000.
Allen was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA, on September 26, 1957, the youngest of three children. His family moved to Bethesda, Maryland when he was nine years old. He grew up in the Washington area, attending Walt Whitman High School. He went to Boston University, and graduated with a degree in journalism in 1979. He returned to the Washington area to take on a series of jobs to support himself while he tried to finish his first novel. He worked as a waiter, a typewriter salesman, a telephone answering service operator, a bookstore clerk, and at a series of unintentionally hilarious temp jobs. Then, more or less accidentally, he landed a job in the publications department of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. This small association, better known as AGB, was dedicated to the idea of helping college and university trustees do their jobs better. While at AGB, Roger sold his first novel, THE TORCH OF HONOR, to Baen Books, and then sold his second, ROGUE POWERS, on the basis of an outline. He quit AGB, having learned a great deal about layout, design, editing and production, but still not quite sure what the job of a trustee was. It was the first and last nine-to-five job he ever held.
Roger settled down to write full time, and he has produced roughly a book a year from that time to this. Click Here to see a list of Roger MacBride Allen's books
In 1992, at a science fiction convention in New York, Roger met Eleanore Fox, who was then working as a literary agent. While it might not have been causally related to meeting the author, she immediately joined the Foreign Service and left the country. Her first post took her to London, England. Roger, still living in Washington, proceeded to commute relentlessly back and forth across the Atlantic in order to see her. At last, her resistance was worn down. They were married, in California, on July 10, 1994. Shortly after their wedding, Eleanore left the country once again, this time heading for Brasilia, Brazil. This time, however, the author followed.
After two and a half years in that remarkably dull tropical capital, they returned to the Washington area, bringing their three-legged Brazilian cat, The Woozle, with them. They have settled into a house twice as old as Brasilia in the city of Takoma Park, Maryland, and have spent a large part of the last year and a half undoing what the previous owner did to the house. They recently hired an assistant kitten, named Mina (after the heroine of Dracula), to aid The Woozle in the complex task of overseeing these repairs.
On November 12, 1998, Eleanore gave birth to MATTHEW THOMAS ALLEN, who has been running things to suit himself ever since -- and doing a fine job at it, too.
Last Updated: February 28, 2002
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