Biography
Russell Kirkpatrick was born in 1961 in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he lived until 2000. He is a geography PhD graduate of the University of Canterbury, and currently lectures at the University of Waikato in Hamilton. During the 1990s he was fortunate enough to work on two major atlas projects, as Deputy Editor of the New Zealand Historical Atlas (Readers Choice winner, Montana Book Awards, 1998), and as author of Contemporary Atlas New Zealand (Montana Book Award finalist, 2000). He has been involved in four other published atlas projects, and continues to work on atlases when he can. His latest project is an atlas of Bahrain.
In February 2004 Across The Face Of The World, the first book in Russell's Fire of Heaven fantasy trilogy was published by HarperCollins Voyager Australia, and has been sold into a number of overseas countries. The second volume, In The Earth Abides The Flame, was published in August 2004, with the concluding volume, The Right Hand Of God, published in February 2005. Across the Face of the World was published by Orbit in the UK in May 2006, and the second and third novels will follow at six-monthly intervals. He is now at work on another novel, The Path of Revenge.
Apart from cartography and writing, his major passions are reading, music - anything except country & western and polka - and sport. He plays golf to a 2 handicap. Russell is married to Dorinda, and they have two fine young men, a bichon frise, assorted cats, a ridiculously large Lego collection, a decent Cornishware collection and - finally - a new house in a gully. The perfect hideaway for a writer.