LOST WORLDS

John Wilson is the award-winning author of over 50 books of fiction, non-fiction and photography for adults, teens and kids. His passion for history informs everything he creates from a WWI soldier's illustrated diary and a photographic examination of the ruins he has visited around the world, to imagined adventures from Herculaneum to Stalingrad and a memoir of growing up in the west of Scotland.

His lifelong passions for storytelling and the past originated in a childhood immersed in nostalgic family anecdotes of the vanished world of the Indian Raj. It was a lost world, only possible to visit in recollections around the fire and in leather-bound albums of grainy, sepia photographs, but these recollections and images created a traveller who dreamed of discovering the hidden tales the past had to tell. Eventually, John began putting the fragments he discovered into stories and then trapping them between covers to share with the rest of the world.

ABOUT

I was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, but grew up on the Isle of Skye (I could speak some Gaelic when I was four), and in Paisley, outside Glasgow. I was a troubled teen and only applied myself in high school when someone said I couldn't do something. One time I was in the Principal's office for some forgotten reason, and he said I would never amount to anything. That annoyed me and I set out to prove him wrong—was he smarter than I gave him credit for?

Anyway, I went to St. Andrews University and did an Honours Degree in Geology. I worked in Zimbabwe, but there was a war on, so I moved to Alberta where I worked for twelve years in coal exploration, on the oil patch and for the Alberta Geological Survey mapping the rocks on the shores of Lake Athabasca. After backpacking round the world for a year and a mid-life crisis, I took up freelance writing and travel photography in 1989 and moved out to Vancouver Island in 1991 to write full time.

History inspires everything I write and much of what I photograph—from stories about dinosaurs and kids caught up in the chaos of war, to contemporary characters discovering forgotten family journals and trying to solve mysteries and recover stolen artifacts. As I write and photograph, I imagine myself in the time and place I'm researching, after all, the past must have been just as exciting, confusing and complex to those who lived through it as our world is to us. My books appeal to all ages and are enjoyed by anyone who appreciates excitement, adventure and a good story.

Hard at work researching Written in Blood: The Desert Legends Trilogy at White Sands, New Mexico. The photograph for the cover of the trilogy was taken later in the day from the dunes in the background.

Photograph by Iain Wilson

Learn more about John and how he became a storyteller and author in:

Lands of Lost Content: A Memoir.