David Eddings

Eddings had completed the first draft of his first published novel, High Hunt, in March 1971 while serving his jail term.[12] High Hunt was a contemporary story of four young men hunting deer, and like many of his later novels, it explores themes of manhood and coming of age. Convinced that being an author was his future career, after a short period in Denver, David and Leigh Eddings moved to Spokane, where he once again relied on a job at a grocery shop for his funds. High Hunt was published in early 1972 by G. P. Putnam's Sons to modestly positive reviews.[13]

Eddings continued to work on several unpublished novels, including Hunseeker's Ascent, a story about mountain climbing, which was later burned, as Eddings claimed it was "a piece of tripe so bad it even bored me."[14] Most of his attempts followed the same vein as High Hunt: adventure stories and contemporary tragedies. None were sold or published, with the eventual exception of The Losers, which tells the story of God and the Devil, cast in the roles of Raphael Taylor, gifted student and athlete, and Damon Flood, scoundrel determined to bring Raphael down. Though written in the 1970s, The Losers was not published until June 1992, well after Eddings' success as an author was established.[7]

Eddings doodled a fantasy map one morning before work. According to Eddings, several years later, upon seeing a copy of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in a bookshop, he muttered, "Is this old turkey still floating around?", and was shocked to learn that it was in its 78th printing. However, he had already included Tolkien's work in the syllabuses for at least three sections of his English Literature survey courses in the summer of 1967 and the springs of 1968 and 1969.[15] Eddings subsequently began to annotate his previous doodle, which became the geographical basis for the country of Aloria.[14] Over the course of a year he added names to various kingdoms, races, and characters, and invented various theologies and a mythology, all of which counted about 230 pages.

Because the Lord of the Rings had been published as three books, Eddings believed fantasy in general was supposed to be trilogies. He initially laid out The Belgariad as a trilogy as well, until his editor Lester del Rey told him the booksellers would refuse to accept 600-page books. Instead del Rey suggested the series should be published as five books. Eddings at first refused, but having already signed the contract, and with Del Rey's promise that he would receive advances for five books instead of three, eventually agreed.[16] Pawn of Prophecy, the first volume in the series, was issued in April 1982.

The Belgariad series of books (published in five volumes between 1982 and 1984) were popular, and Eddings would continue to produce fantasy material for the rest of his life, usually producing a book every year or two.

By 1995, new books were credited jointly to David and Leigh Eddings; Eddings explained in a brief foreword that their working together as authors "had been the case from the beginning." This is generally accepted to be broadly accurate,[17][18][19] although Eddings scholar James Gifford notes that collaboration would have been "impossible" with Eddings' first published novel High Hunt, as David Eddings' own notes show that the first draft was completed while he and Leigh were both in different jails, about half-way through their terms.[20]

The Eddingses' final work, the novel series The Dreamers, was published in four volumes between 2003 and 2006.