Troy Denning

Troy Denning is the New York Times bestselling author of more than forty novels of fantasy and science fiction set in a variety of popular game and movie worlds, including Halo, Star Wars, Dark Sun, and the Forgotten Realms. He began his career directly out of Beloit College in 1981, when he landed a job at TSR Hobbies as a games editor. Over the next two years, he held several games-related positions at TSR, including manager of games editing and manager of game design. He left in 1984 to join John Ricketts, Mark Acres, and several other former TSR personnel in founding Pacesetter Games, where he served as the VP of Production and designed the award-winning tile/boardgame CHILL: BLACK MORN MANOR.

After a short detour to manage the acquisition and editing department at MAYFAIR GAMES and work on a variety of freelance gaming projects, he returned to TSR in 1989 as a senior game designer, where he designed the DARK SUN game setting with Tim Brown, Mary Kirchoff and Brom. It was during this period he also wrote his first New York Times bestseller, the Forgotten Realms tie-in novel Waterdeep.

Upon completing the DARK SUN setting, he transitioned to full-time novelist by penning the first five DARK SUN novels, the Prism Pentad. He continued to write tie-in novels for TSR until 2000, when he was approached to write STAR WARS novels. It was a happy match for more than a decade, producing 12 novels in a variety of series.

Then Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012 and rebooted STAR WARS continuity. (Grrr.)

Denning completed the final novel in the original “Legends” continuity in 2013 (Crucible), then happily moved on to a new love with the publication of HALO: Last Light in 2015. So far, he has published a total of eight HALO novels, and occasionally emerges from retirement to work on other HALO projects. [Photo Credits Andria Hayday].