David Eddings

Early literary career

Eddings had completed the first draft of his first published novel, High Hunt, in March 1971 while serving his jail term.^[10] High Hunt was a contemporary story of four young men hunting deer. Like many of his later novels, it explores themes of manhood and coming of age.

Eddings and his wife were convicted of child abuse (see lower section). He did not return to academia after his jail term was completed. After a short period in Denver, David and Leigh Eddings moved to Spokane, where he relied on a job at a grocery shop for his funds, and worked at the writing in his spare time. High Hunt was published in early 1972 by G. P. Putnam's Sons to modestly positive reviews.^[11]

Eddings continued to work on several unpublished novels, including Hunseeker's Ascent, a story about mountain climbing, which was later burned, as Eddings claimed it was "a piece of tripe so bad it even bored me."^[8]: 11 Most of his attempts followed the same vein as High Hunt: adventure stories and contemporary tragedies. None were sold or published, with the eventual exception of The Losers, which tells the story of God and the Devil cast in the roles of Raphael Taylor, gifted student and athlete, and Damon Flood, a scoundrel determined to bring Raphael down. Though written in the 1970s, The Losers was not published until June 1992, well after Eddings' success as an author was established.^[9]

Success in fantasy writing

Eddings doodled a fantasy map one morning before work. According to Eddings' account several years later, when seeing a copy of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in a bookshop, he muttered, "Is this old turkey still floating around?". He was surprised to learn that it was then in its 78th printing. He had, though, already included Tolkien's work in the syllabuses for at least three sections of his English Literature survey courses in the summer of 1967 and the springs of 1968 and 1969.^[12] He began to annotate the map doodle, which became the basis for his fictional country of Aloria.^[8]: 11 Over the course of a year, Edding detailed around 250 pages of kingdoms, races, characters, theologies and a mythology.^{[citation needed]}

As the Lord of the Rings had been published as three books, Eddings believed fantasy in general was supposed to be published in trilogy form. He initially laid out The Belgariad as three books, until his editor, Lester del Rey, advised him that booksellers would refuse to accept books of 600 pages. Del Rey suggested the series be published as five books. Eddings at first refused, but having already signed the contract, and with Del Rey's promise that he would receive advances for five books rather than three, agreed to the arrangement.^[13] Pawn of Prophecy, the first volume in the series, was issued in April 1982. The next four novels where published between then and 1984 and proved to be popular. Eddings continued to produce fantasy novels for the rest of his life, usually producing a book every year or two.^{[citation needed]}

From 1995 onwards, the novels were credited jointly to Leigh Eddings; Eddings explained in a foreword that their working together as authors "had been the case from the beginning." This is generally accepted as broadly accurate,^[14][15][16] although Eddings scholar James Gifford notes that collaboration would have been "impossible" with High Hunt, as David Eddings' own notes show that the first draft was completed while he and Leigh were both in separate jails, about half-way through their terms.^[10]

The Eddingses' final work, the novel series The Dreamers, was published in four volumes between 2003 and 2006.^{[citation needed]}

Wife

While working at Boeing, Eddings met his future wife, then known as Judith Leigh Schall.^[8]: 10 They married in 1962, with Judith taking the name Leigh Eddings. She is credited as a co-author on his works starting in 1995.

Child abuse conviction

Eddings and his wife Leigh pled guilty to 11 counts of physical child abuse^[17] of their adopted children. They adopted one boy in 1966, Scott David, a two months old;^[18][19] subsequently, the couple adopted a girl between 1966 and 1969.^[19] In 1970, the couple lost custody of both children. The parents were each sentenced to a year in jail in separate trials for extensive child abuse of both children.^[17] Both Eddings wrote works while imprisoned.^[10]

Though the trial and conviction of both David and Leigh Eddings was reported in the local press, the news was not widely disseminated, as Eddings was an obscure academic at the time. The conviction was consequently not remarked on after Eddings became a well-known author over a decade later; it was not widely publicly revealed until after his death.^{[citation needed]}

Later life

On January 26, 2007, Eddings accidentally burned about a quarter of his office, next door to his house, along with his Excalibur sports car^[20] while using water to flush the vehicle's gas tank.^[2]

On February 28, 2007, David Eddings' wife Leigh died following a series of strokes that left her unable to communicate. She was 69 years old.^[21][22] Eddings cared for her at home with her mother after her first stroke, which occurred three years before he finished writing The Dreamers.^[12]

Eddings' brother Dennis recounted that how David had suffered from dementia for a long time,^[2] but that the disease had progressed rapidly since September 2008, and that he needed 24-hour care. Dennis also confirmed that in his last months, his brother had been working on a manuscript that was unlike any of his other works, stating "It was very, very different. I wouldn't call it exactly a satire of fantasy but it sure plays with the genre". The unfinished work, along with his other manuscripts, went to his alma mater, Reed College,^[2] along with a bequest of $18 million to fund "students and faculty studying languages and literature."^[23] Eddings also bequeathed $10 million to the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, Colorado, for pediatric asthma treatment and research; Eddings' wife Leigh had asthma throughout her life.^[24]