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Peter Morwood (born 20 October 1956,Northern Ireland) is an Irish novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for hisHorse Lords andTales of Old Russia series. He lives in Ireland with his wife, writerDiane Duane, with whom he has co-authored several works.
After graduating from university in 1979, Morwood took a position in the UK's civil service as a clerk working for theCustoms and Excise.
During this period he began work on his first novel, which he submitted and sold in 1982. He adopted the pen name "Peter Morwood" in honour of his mother, whose maiden name was Morwood, and he legally changed his surname to match the pen name in the mid-1980s. His second and third novels were published in 1984 and 1986.
At a science fiction convention inGlasgow,Scotland in 1985, Morwood was introduced by authorAnne McCaffrey to his future wife, the fantasy and science fiction writerDiane Duane. After several more meetings and a brief courtship, Morwood asked Duane to marry him, and they celebrated their engagement at theWorld Science Fiction Convention inAtlanta, Georgia. Morwood then returned to Northern Ireland to complete his term of employment in the Civil Service, and resigned his post in December 1986. Shortly thereafter he relocated to Los Angeles, California, where Duane was working for the animation studioDiC. They were married at theNew England regional science fiction convention,Boskone, on 15 February 1987.[1]
Later in 1987, Morwood and Duane relocated briefly to Scotland, and then, after a short period spent roving the United Kingdom, moved toCounty Wicklow in Ireland, where the two of them still reside.[2][3]
These two sequences of books center on a feudal-style realm calledAlba and the struggles of various clans for its domination. The first sequence is told from the point of view of Aldric Talvalin, scion of a warrior clan of Alba, who is unwillingly drawn into the bloody intrigues of Alban politics and the machinations of the Drusalan Empire, including its power-behind-the-throne, the evilly scheming and sorcerous Commander Voord.
A fifth book (tentatively titledThe Shadow Lord) and a sixth (title as yet indeterminate) have been projected for more than two decades.
The fourHorse Lords novels were reissued byDAW Books in 2005 as a pair of two-book omnibus volumes:
In Volume 2, the novel previously published asThe Warlord's Domain was restored to its intended title,The War Lord.
TheClan Wars sequence is (so far) a pair of prequels, telling the story of how the Clan Lords (including Aldric Talvalin's remote ancestors) invaded the land of Alba, settled it, and eventually came to dominate it.
A third volume (tentatively titledCradlesong) is projected.
This series, densely interwoven with motifs from Russian folktale and legend, tells the story of the young tsar Ivan Khorlovskiy, heir to the throne of the city of Khorlov. Complications instantly ensue when he meets, on a battlefield full of the slain, the sorceress-tsarevnaMarya Morevna, "the most beautiful princess inall the Russias", and becomes involved willy-nilly in her entanglement with the ancient and deadly being known asKoschei the Undying. The series goes on to deal humorously with the difficulties of a "two-kingdom household", especially when one partner is both a skilled sorcerer and the mother of one's (rather unusual) children, and – more seriously – with the political problems that can beset a small independent tsardom in the face of such threats as the Teutonic Knights and the Golden Horde of the Great Khan.
A fourth volume,The Blue Kremlin, is projected since the mid-1990s.
Morwood has written one solo Star Trek novel:
He has also collaborated on one with Diane Duane (this novel was written during their honeymoon):
Morwood has occasionally collaborated with Diane Duane on other novels, primarily in "licensed" universes or shared-world scenarios. These include:
TheSpace Cops sequence:
Others:
Morwood has written various animated scripts, often in collaboration with his wife. These include:
In 1999, Morwood began development work along with Duane on a live-action retelling of theNibelungenlied. The script they wrote between late 2002 and mid-2003 was produced as aminiseries for the German satellite networkSat.1 byTandem Communications of Munich, in association withSony/Columbia Pictures. Directed byUli Edel, the miniseries, under the title Die Nibelungen, won a DIVA Award for best German movie-for-TV of 2004. A feature version, entitledSword of Xanten in the UK, screened there late in 2004; a "megafeature" cut of the entire miniseries aired onChannel Four television in the UK in December 2005.
The miniseries had its American premiere airing on the Sci-Fi Channel in late March 2006 under the titleDark Kingdom: The Dragon King. It has also been released on DVD in the US and many other markets, under various titles (the previous US title isCurse of the Ring.)
