Margaret Weis

Margaret Edith Weis (born March 16, 1948) is an American fantasy and science fiction author of dozens of novels and short stories. At TSR, Inc., she teamed with Tracy Hickman to create the Dragonlance role-playing game (RPG) world. She is founding CEO and owner of Sovereign Press, Inc and Margaret Weis Productions, licensing several popular television and movie franchises to make RPG series in addition to their own.

In 1999, Pyramid magazine named Weis one of The Millennium's Most Influential Persons, saying she and Hickman are "basically responsible for the entire gaming fiction genre". In 2002, she was inducted into the Origins Hall of Fame in part for Dragonlance.

Early life

Margaret Weis was born on March 16, 1948, in Independence, Missouri,[1] where she was raised. She discovered heroic fantasy fiction while studying at the University of Missouri (MU). She said, "I read Tolkien when it made its first big sweep in the colleges back in 1966. A girlfriend of mine gave me a copy of the books while I was in summer school at MU. I literally couldn't put them down! I never found any other fantasy I liked, and just never read any fantasy after Tolkien."[2]

Entrepreneur

Having left TSR in 1986,[3] Weis and Hickman continued as a writing team. According to the Kansas City Star profile of major local authors "transformed" by pioneering fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien, the duo sought to recapture the reality-grounded and humanized experience of Tolkien literature but without copying or emulating it, so a reader could imagine meeting their original magical characters in a real place like a bus stop and conversing using pronounceable names.[3] She attributed their writing partnership's longevity to specialization, where Hickman was the world builder and storyteller who defines "when the moon rises and which way the winds blow", and she brought characters and substance. He then untangled her unsolvable situations.[5] Weis and Hickman wrote the Darksword trilogy (1986–87) and the seven-book Deathgate Cycle (1988–94) for Bantam Books.[6]

Weis's daily workflow consisted of five hours of writing on the computer, starting at 7:30 a.m., even on holidays, often rewriting anything that had surpassed five hours the previous day, and then thinking about the book through the afternoon. She wrote plot ideas and dialogue scraps upon napkins and envelopes until she got a portable computer, and got nervous if unable to work. She said, "I'd love to do mysteries but I don't have the head for them". She mentally, happily, inhabited her own fictional worlds; and upon completion, suffered "a real depression" due to abandoning characters that seemed realer than most people. Her only vacations consisted of hosting fantasy and science fiction conventions worldwide and befriending her fans.[5]

Weis wrote the space opera Star of the Guardians novels, which she calls her favorite series that she has written. She published a game based on Mag Force 7 from 1994 to 1996.[6] In the late 1990s, Larry Elmore brought his fantasy world of Loerem to Weis and Hickman, which they wrote as the Sovereign Stone novel trilogy, published by Del Rey.[6][8] From 2003 to 2005, Weis completed the Dragonvarld trilogy for Tor.

In 1999, Pyramid magazine named Weis one of The Millennium's Most Influential Persons "at least in the realm of adventure gaming", and said she and Hickman are "basically responsible for the entire gaming fiction genre".[13] Weis was inducted into the Origins Hall of Fame in 2002, recognized in part for "one game line turned literary sensation: Dragonlance".[14]

Publishing companies

In addition to her writing career, Weis was the owner and chief officer of two publishing companies. She formed the company Sovereign Press, with herself as CEO, to publish the Sovereign Stone role-playing game written by her husband Don Perrin with Lester Smith.[8] To support the setting, Weis and Perrin wrote the short story "Shadamehr and the Old Wives Tale" that was published in Dragon #264 (October 1999).[8] Perrin left Sovereign Press in 2004 and Weis founded Margaret Weis Productions.[8] It published an RPG line based on several licenses, including Serenity and Battlestar Galactica, and Ed Greenwood's new solo venture into roleplaying, Castlemourn.

Weis has served on the board of directors of Mag Force 7, Inc., the developer of the Star of the Guardians and Wing Commander Collectible Trading Card Game (CCGs).[4]

Returns to Dragonlance

Weis and Hickman returned to Dragonlance in 1995 with Dragons of Summer Flame. Her next project was a solo novel called The Soulforge, based on her favorite character from the trilogy, the dark wizard Raistlin.[6] Wizards of the Coast published a new trilogy of Dragonlance novels by Weis and Hickman called War of Souls, beginning with Dragons of a Fallen Sun (2000).[8]

Wizards of the Coast licensed Dragonlance to Sovereign Press in 2002 to produce role-playing game materials for the setting; Weis and Perrin, with Jamie Chambers and Christopher Coyle, wrote Dragonlance Campaign Setting (2003) which Wizards of the Coast published. Sovereign Press was then able to supplement that book additional using material produced under the d20 license.[8] The license expired in 2007.[15] Between 2004 and 2008, Weis wrote a solo novel trilogy titled The Dark Disciple; the first novel, Amber and Ashes, was published in August 2004. During this period, Weis also co-authored with Hickman The Lost Chronicles trilogy starting with Dragons of the Dwarven Depths in July 2006. There was a fifteen-year hiatus between novels about the Companions before Dragons of the Dwarven Depths was released. After the original Chronicles novels were completed in 1991, the co-authors had a lot of material about them remaining, but moved on to writing about new characters. In 2004, Weis told Hickman she wanted to return to the main protagonists of the Dragonlance world. When the pair contacted their editors, they enthusiastically agreed.[16]

In October 2020, Weis and Tracy Hickman filed suit against Wizards of the Coast for breaching a license for a new Dragonlance novel trilogy.[17][18] Boing Boing reported that "according to the lawsuit, Weis and Hickman agreed with Wizards of the Coast to produce the new novels in 2017, capping off the series and giving fans a final sendoff. But the company pulled the plug in August 2020".[19] The authors see the new trilogy as "the capstone to their life's work".[20] In December 2020, Weis and Hickman filed to voluntarily dismiss without prejudice their lawsuit,[21] and "the filing noted that Wizards of the Coast had not formally answered their lawsuit, nor had they filed for a summary judgement".[22] Weis and Hickman's publishing agent affirmed a few weeks later that a new trilogy of Dragonlance novels was again in development.[23]

birth date	March 16, 1948
birth place	Independence, Missouri, U.S.
education	University of Missouri (BA)
occupation	Novelist
spouse	Robert William Baldwin (1970–1982) Donald Bayne Stewart Perrin (1996–2003)
children	2
period	1984–present
genre	Fantasy, science fiction
website	margaretweis.com

Early life

Career

TSR and Dragonlance

Personal life

Bibliography

External links

References

Entrepreneur

Publishing companies

Publishing companies

Returns to Dragonlance