James Bibby

James Bibby is a fantasy author. He began his writing career in 1980 and wrote for, amongst others, Chris Tarrant and Lenny Henry. He lives in Wirral with his family.

James Bibby was born in Birkenhead in 1953. It was a shock for his mother, who was in Manchester at the time. A childhood spent devouring books and listening to every comedy show going resulted in a desire to be a writer and so (after leaving what is now Liverpool John Moores University, with a dodgy degree in Ecology) he settled down to write the definative children's novel. Six months later, after producing a mere thirty pages and nearly dying of starvation, he decided he'd better get a real job.

Having spent four years at college learning how to save small, furry creatures, it made perfect sense to kill a few instead, and so he joined a well-known pest control company. Mediocrity beckoned, until a small sketch sent in to the BBC was used on Not the Nine O'Clock News (it was based around the well-known Ready-Brek advert and claimed that the warmly-glowing kid in it was radioactive). This resulted in an invitation to join the writing team on Three of a Kind, and then OTT (the adult follow-up to Tiswas). After a fantasy sit-com written for Humphrey Barclay was turned down at the last hurdle by the head of LWT, Bibby turned it into a novel, the first of his fantasy quartet.

Since the turn of the millennium he has been fully occupied in looking after his family. Now, at long last, he is back at work on his fifth book. Hopefully, it will be finished by the turn of the next millennium.

Published works

List of books

*Ronan the Barbarian (1995)
*Ronan's Rescue (1996)
*Ronan's Revenge (1998)
*Shapestone (1999)

hort stories

*"Fall'n Into The Sear" (The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy, 1998)
*"Pale Assassin" (The Mammoth Book Of Awesome Comic Fantasy, 2001)
*"The Power And The Gory" (The Mammoth Book Of New Comic Fantasy, 2004)
*"The Last Witch" (The Mammoth Book Of Sorcerers' Tales, 2005)