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American writer

Robert Anthony Salvatore (born January 20, 1959) is an American author best known for The Legend of Drizzt, a series of fantasy novels set in the Forgotten Realms and starring the character Drizzt Do'Urden. He has also written The DemonWars Saga, a series of high fantasy novels; several other Forgotten Realms novels; and Vector Prime, the first novel in the Star Wars: The New Jedi Order series. He has sold more than 15 million copies of his books in the United States alone, and 22 of his titles have been New York Times best sellers.

Salvatore was born in Leominster, Massachusetts, the youngest of a family of seven. A graduate of Leominster High School, he has said his high school English teacher was instrumental in his development as a writer. During his time at Fitchburg State College, he became interested in fantasy after reading J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, given to him as a Christmas gift. He developed an interest in fantasy and other literature, and changed his major from computer science to journalism, earning a Bachelor of Science in communications/media in 1981. Later he earned a Bachelor of Arts in English. He attributes his fierce and vividly described battle scenes to his experience as a bouncer. In 1997, Salvatore's letters, manuscripts, and other professional papers were donated to the R. A. Salvatore collection at Fitchburg State University. He created the setting of Ynis Aielle for the novel, writing it in longhand by candlelight. Salvatore sent the work to several publishers from 1983 to 1987, including TSR, Inc. Mary Kirchoff, then working for TSR's book department in reviewing the slush pile of unsolicited submissions, did not like the story much, but did like Salvatore's writing. TSR was then looking for an author to write the second book in the Forgotten Realms line and asked Salvatore to audition. In July 1987, he won the assignment. Salvatore's Icewind Dale trilogy (The Crystal Shard, Streams of Silver, and The Halfling's Gem) was a huge hit, with over 1.5 million copies sold of the first two novels, and the third book hitting The New York Times list of paperback bestsellers. Much later, after Disney bought the rights to Star Wars in 2012, it declared in 2014 that all Expanded Universe works released before 2014 were non canon. Chewbacca's death in Vector Prime was cited as a major reason for revoking the canonical status of so many works.

In February 2008, Devil's Due Publishing published Spooks, a comic book about a U. S. government anti paranormal investigator/task force created by Larry Hama and Salvatore. Hama created the military characters and plots, and Salvatore covered the monster characters. In addition to his novels, Salvatore has written for video games. He wrote the story for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC video game Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone (2004), working with the design team at Stormfront Studios. The game was published by Atari and was nominated for awards by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences and BAFTA. CDS books commissioned him to edit a four book series based on the interactive online EverQuest game. He also wrote the bot chat lines for the Quake III bots. Salvatore was hired as creative director for the newly created game developer 38 Studios, owned by former baseball player Curt Schilling. He wrote the dialogue and created a backstory spanning 10,000 years for the fantasy game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which was released in 2012 and sold over one million units. But three months later, 38 Studios declared bankruptcy and ceased operations. The company laid off its entire staff, including Salvatore, with the $2 million fee for his services never paid. Salvatore said he harbored no ill will toward Schilling, who "didn't do anything nefarious" and also suffered losses. In 2010, Wizards of the Coast announced a new deal with Salvatore to write six more books featuring Drizzt; the books were released between 2011 and 2016.