Landon J. Napoleon
LANDON J. NAPOLEON was born in 1964 in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in nearby Ft. Collins. He wrote his first novella, Donald the Dragonfly, at age 10, and he’s been writing ever since.
He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication at Arizona State University (B.A., 1989) and a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Glasgow (M.Phil, 1996).
In the early 1990s, after a brief and harrowing stint in corporate public relations, Landon left that job—his first and last official one—to pursue his dream of being an author. For his first published piece about a local bicycle race, he earned the princely sum of $95. For the next seven years, he published widely in magazines, newspapers and other publications around the world. He went on assignment for corporate clients to Australia, Europe, Mexico and Singapore. And he wrote three novels that didn’t sell.
In 1997, still determined, Landon penned ZigZag and broke through in a big way. British publisher Bloomsbury bought the book first, in February 1998, followed by publishers in the USA (Henry Holt), Germany (Rowohlt), and Portugal (Dom Quixote). ZigZag hit bookstore shelves in June 1999. That same month, Hollywood writer, director and producer David S. Goyer came across the novel in an L.A. bookstore. Exactly 10 years after Landon left his job to write full-time, Franchise Pictures began filming ZigZag on location in Los Angeles. The film stars Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo, and was released in 2002.
In 2005, the author interviewed a high-profile plaintiff’s attorney for a magazine piece, and from that meeting the idea for the Connor J. Devlin legal series was born. The first installment, The Rules of Action, hit bookstores in 2010 to high praise. The highly anticipated second book in the series, The Dark Action, is scheduled for release in late 2011.
Landon lives in Arizona with his family.